The Green Himalayan expedition is a part of the Clean Cooking Stove project where volunteers take up an environmentally friendly stove to remote villages where the volunteers advertise the stoves and convince the villagers to buy them for a cheap price. The stoves use lesser firewood, emit less smoke, and hence cuts the time the women have to spend collecting firewood and is better for their health. We did this in two villages, and the result was that we managed to largely convince the villagers to use the stove. After this, we started our trek up the mountain: Nag Tibba. The whole trek took 3 days and at the end of each day, we would set up camp and pitch our own tents. We would sleep in sleeping bags and we would even get our driving water from the streams next to our campsites. This trek was from 25th to 28th June 2019. On the first day, we took a train to Dehradun from where we took a five-hour drive to our first campsite. The next three days were then spent on the project and the trek. I felt that this trek was a lot of fun as I made a lot of new friends. It also tested my limits both physically and mentally as I had to trek for a couple of hours in a day, and I had to interact with people who could only speak Hindi which is a language I’m not very proficient in. That is why this trek was a very valuable experience for me.

Written By: Mahima Rao, Grade XII, The Shri Ram School Moulsari. UC Global Scholar 2019-2021