Lost Lessons in the Hills

In the remote mountains of Jammu and Kashmir, mobile schools are racing against geography, poverty, and tradition to keep nomadic children from being left behind.

- Abhishek Kaiyat

In much of the world, children travel to school. In the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir, sometimes it’s the school that must travel to the child.

For thousands of tribal children—Gujjars, Bakarwals, Gaddis, Sippis—education has never been as simple as stepping into a classroom. These children live on the move, crossing valleys and climbing high-altitude pastures as part of centuries-old migration patterns.

For them, the school bell does not ring in a building with walls and a blackboard. If they are lucky, it arrives in a tent or a van, somewhere on the slopes of the Pir Panjal.

Jammu and Kashmir’s tribal population makes up nearly 12 percent of the region, according to the 2011 Census. The Gujjars and Bakarwals, the largest among them, are pastoral communities who depend on seasonal migration to graze their livestock. Their life is defined by movement, from lowland villages in winter to alpine meadows in summer.

But this rhythm of life, so closely tied to the land, has long placed them beyond the reach of conventional education.

Even today, many tribal settlements remain disconnected from basic infrastructure. Roads are often missing. Schools, if they exist, are too far. Teachers rarely come. For tribal children, especially girls, walking hours to a distant school is not just impractical, it’s unsafe.

This is where mobile schools come in. Designed to follow the migratory routes of nomadic communities, these schools move with the families, setting up temporary classrooms wherever they stop. In theory, this solves a critical problem: how to provide uninterrupted education to children whose lives do not stand still.

In practice, though, the system is struggling to keep pace.