Date- August 2024
Time-8-9.30 pm
Venue- Hotel stay at Dras, Kargil
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” –Benjamin Franklin
Great learning happens when one gets deeply involved in projects on ground. It’s a blessing that we get to travel to remote border areas to initiate education related projects and workshops through the @himalayan volunteer tourism initiative.

Drass and Kargil are few places where we worked in over 7 schools for Foldscope workshops and closely connected with the children , teachers and community in Aug 24.
One of the incentives to visit Kargil was to finally meet Abass Pintoo
Mohammad Abass, popularly known as Pintoo in his Sharchay village,Kargil. The village is based on 35 households and belonging to the Dard Aryan community of Kargil district. The language spoken is called as Brokskat (DardAryan).

Born in Barot village, his schooling was in his native Village school and higher education in Jammu and Delhi. After completing a masters in journalism, he wanted to become a Radio Jockey, wanting to highlight public issues. Facing reality, struggling for a while ,he finally applied for a teachers job.
How life takes unpredictable turns…he got selected in Education Dept as a Teacher in 2020, and he felt he could somehow impact the future generation, where education takes a backseat due to its remote location.
This school is about 80 kms away from main Kargil town and around 10 km by walking uphill with no road and no network connectivity.
Soon he got so passionately involved being the Head Master of this tiny school that he actually donated his own land and salary to develop the school further. He actually carried the logs of wood uphill to build the library and painted the walls along with the students.
HVT has been working with Abass past few years to support his mission.
During my project trip in Aug, he came down to Kargil to meet our team. It was my pleasure to finally spend some time with him and teach him the unfolding of the Foldscope a tool that he would go on to use for the students of this school. I do plan to visit this place sometime and initiate some projects with the help of HVT.

A genuine thank you to people like Rupesh Gesota Poonam Khanvilkar Lopes and Nikhath Sumaiya who have actually volunteered in this school to teach.
Universe connects people for a reason. Rarely see such dedication and passion in a person to leave the city life and go back to his remote village to support education for the children.