I have always felt there is something powerful about engaging with children and there is something even more powerful when this engagement gives them the power to imagine. Their imaginations are true, sometimes wild or raw, but always free.

While I was in Ladakh in August 2019, I was super excited to meet kids who were to participate in our outdoor experiential learning camps. I accompanied two of my colleagues to Khatpu, the place where the camp was scheduled to take place, to finalize a few arrangements. Khatpu is a dreamland. It lies on the way to Chumathang in the Rong valley, just before Himya. It is nestled in a valley between two rocky and gigantic mountains, facing an even more enigmatic and humongous, godly mountain, below which the mystic Indus flows fearlessly. There was something unusual about this godly mountain- it radiated beauty, strength, love and calmness, which I felt I could imbibe by looking at it.

A week later, I arrive with our team at Khatpu with tents and tent equipment, kitchen ration and utensils and other necessary items to sustain the camps for next twenty days. Dusk was setting in and I ventured off to explore the place around and noticed the sun setting behind the valley that harbored Khatpu village. As I turned around to look at the mountain of my dreams, I noticed it was the lone entity in the entire landscape on which the rays of the fading sun were falling, due to the angle made by sun-rays and positioning of all the mountains. The living giant resembled a quasar emanating light and life which can enrapture and soothe a sullen.

A few local villagers had come to help set up the tents and the kitchen. While having a light-hearted conversation, I asked them about the mountain. They said it is known as ‘La Chhenmo’ and it had a story with a sad ending. I verified the story with a couple of others from the community and it turned out to be the same. A mountain that glows like an infinite flame during sunset, La Chhenmo was too mesmerizing, magnificent and breath-taking to have a sad ending. The next day, I got up while the sun was rising and to my surprise it was rising from right behind La Chhenmo, giving it a typical saint like look with a halo around its peak. I had to sit and look at it with awe and wonder.

The opportunity cannot be missed. La Chhenmo had to be the muse to create a fiction around it for the kids to feel the outdoors. As Neil Gaiman says, “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”

First, we had to figure out the activities that the kids will be engrossed in, during the sunset and the sunrise next day, to showcase the unique phenomena associated with La Chhenmo. Second, we had to build a story, for which we took cues from earlier activity documents made by Pranav and Dipti. All done, a bit of tweaking was required in the schedule to match the timings of the marvels of nature with a few of the activities.

The stage was set, the kids arrived and we were ready for the evening showdown. As the sun sets and rains its light on La Chhenmo to make it glow bright, the students would be asked to see and soak in the enthralling view for a few seconds. Expressions of astonishment and admiration would follow a question to the kids- “Can you think of a name for this splendid, spectacular, sensational, mammoth mountain?” To which the kids would come up with some wired and amazing names. After negotiations, they would be told that the mountain already has a better name- La Chhenmo, and that it is the numen of Khatpu and it has hid something for you to find!

The kids then had to find something hidden under the rocks or under their tents and describe what it was. After they figured out that it was a paper cut-out of a tail of some animal, the animal would fall from the skies (actually, someone would throw the cut-out of the body of the animal near the kids) and they would be asked to see if the tail belongs to the animal and then asked to recognize the animal. After fiery debates, when majority zero in on the animal to be a Snow Leopard, they would be told that it is a tail-less Shan (Snow Leopard in Ladakhi) and it lives in the La Chhenmo, but never comes out of its hide. Expressions of astonishment and admiration would follow a statement for the kids this time, to build up the curiosity of young minds- “Let’s wait till tomorrow to know why it doesn’t come out of its hide.”

Sunrise next day is accompanied by tea, followed by light drills, wherein the kids can see the marvel of La Chhenmo and the rising sun. A birding session along the stream, walking upstream in the valley to reach a beautiful pasture, is followed by a quiz session where the kids get to know that a Snow leopard uses its long and bushy tail to balance itself on rocky cliffs. Some smart ones do connect it to the conversation which took place the day before and put up a typical Shin Chan smile. And finally the time for story-telling arrives, which is a teaser to the five-sense activity that the kids would be engrossed in, immediately after the story.

So the story goes like this: (Continued in the next blogpost)