Kumari Neha Choudhary School

Running a school in Gangtok means dealing with a lot of steep roads and cold mornings. Our place isn't anything fancy to look at from the outside, just another building among the many that line the hillsides here. We don't have a big sign with flashing lights or anything like that. People mostly find us through word of mouth or because they live right in the neighborhood. Every morning, I watch the fog roll in over the rooftops while I wait for the staff to arrive. The interior of the school is pretty simple. We have the standard wooden benches and some old-fashioned blackboards that we still prefer over the newer stuff. It gets quite cold in the classrooms during the winter months, so everyone stays bundled up in their sweaters and jackets. We don't have a big cafeteria, so most of the children bring their lunch from home and eat together in the small courtyard. My day is mostly spent dealing with the small stuff, like making sure we have enough chalk or talking to a parent about their child's progress. It’s a very hands-on job. There’s no corporate office telling us what to do; we just make the decisions that make sense for our situation. It’s a bit of a struggle sometimes with the weather and the narrow roads, but we’ve been doing this for a while now and we know the routine.