How A Delhi Girl's Move To Teach At A Monastery Led Her Whole Family To Live in the Mountains!

Haven't we all romanticized the idea of moving to the mountains at some point or the other? But to what extent would you go in order to make this dream come true? Would you gamble upon a mere Rs. 10,000 salary and the responsibility of feeding 3 mouths to materialize your life in the hills into a reality?

While living in Bir for two months, I was thrilled to discover Cho Cho's Cafe because it served the most scrumptious pav bhaaji. On asking uncle and aunty about how they ended up in the  smal Himachali town, they laughed saying, "it's a long story". In walked Tanya, their barely 24 years old daughter. I assumed that she was just visiting from the city but she was actually teaching at a local monastery roughly 20 kms from Bir. I thought she must have started volunteering to be close to her parents but it turned out that it was her, the youngest daughter of the family, who first moved to the mountains. 

Today, the family runs not one but two cafes in Bir and it all started from one family member teaching at a small monastery. Here's a conversation with Tanya Sharma about how she made it all happen!

From exploring the option of selling handicrafts to opening a cafe and to eventually teaching at a monastery, it seems that you were ready to move to Himachal Pradesh at any cost. Why is that?

I first visited Dharamshala back in 2014 and fell in love with the town in an instant. Call it cliche but there is a calm in a life surrounded by peaks that you simply cannot experience around tall concrete buildings. My father too felt the same and spoke fondly of wanting to live there after his retirement. We visited Dharamshala multiple times from 2017 to 2019 in the hopes of bringing our dream to fruition, but returned home disappointed each time. In 2019, I even wrote a letter to Lord Shiva at Bhagsunag about how I wouldn't come back ever again. Probably he and the valleys around him heard me!

So, after various stints as a wedding planner, a PR professional and a content writer, how did you end up teaching at a monastery?

I has always wanted to pursue teaching but with my parents retiring, I bore the responsibility of bringing bread to the table. So I put my B. Ed. on hold and explored other opportunities. After things not bearing fruit in Dharamshala I'd given in to living and working in the city. That's when one day, out of the blue, I came across a Facebook post mentioning that Khampagar Dharmakar School in Tashi Jong was looking for a teacher. I shot them an email without even thinking that anything would come out of it but a week later, they asked me when I could start.

You mentioned the need of bringing bread to the table, then how did you decide to take up a volunteering position? What were the financial aspects in play?

My parents had worked their whole life and saved enough, but of course, who wants to burn their savings on daily expenditures? My income was the only regular monetary flow. But when the teaching opportunity came up, my father motivated me to go for it! I deliberated over how the family's finances would be met. The monastery would cover my food and stay but that was all. I hunted down a remote job as a social media manager, something I could take up along with my commitments at the monastery. The pay was just Rs 10,000. However, I had finally found something to satiate my interest for teaching, my love for living in the mountains, so, I packed my belongings and a whole lot of faith and left!

Teaching at a monastery had to have surely been quite a unique experience. What were the challenges that you had to deal with?

I was entrusted with teaching English to 74 students and they were aged between 4 years to 15 years. What could be a bigger challenge than not sharing a common language? They didn't know Hindi, they only knew languages from Ladakh, Kinnaur and Kaza. We couldn't communicate and I had to teach them a language. They didn't have textbooks either and some were so young that they would cry at night. It was a learning experience for them but it was a learning experience for me too.

I too signed up for a course on teaching a foreign language, ordered books and came up with techniques to bridge the communication gap. My students could not be taught by simply writing on the board, I'd take them out for hikes and show them things for live examples. Audio-visual and lingual methods became the tools for us. As a teacher it was one of the most unique journeys for me to take.

Also what was living at a monastery like? From Delhi to Tashi Jong, it must have been quite an adaptation, right?

Oh, yes! Hailing from a city of hot paranthas and steaming cups of chai I had to get used to living on tingmo (Tibetan bread) and butter tea. Moreover, I remember being the only woman among 350 monks combined at the monastery college and school. The best part was that not once, not for a moment did I ever feel uncomfortable. Even if my students were ever naughty (yes, monks can be naughty as well!), they were so in a very respectful manner.

How did this transpire to your family moving to Bir and fulfilling their long awaited dream?

Once I was in Tashi Jong in September 2019, we knew that we had one foot in and we couldn't let it go. My father also moved and started helping out in preparing food at the monastery. My mother and our dog, Lucky, had been back home in Karol Bagh by themselves for months when we decided to pack everything in a truck and bring them here. But month after month passed and my parents were still idle, something that they hadn't wanted. One fine day, Suraj (whose family owns the famed Avva Cafe in Bir) posted on Instagram that they were looking for someone to manage their sister cafe named Bombay Local. I reached out to him, shared the fact that my father had once run a restaurant in Delhi and asked him if he'd be willing to meet him. Lo behold, dad was granted the position of chef in December 2019! 

Then came the pandemic.

Suraj's family had to take tough calls like most of us once COVID-19 hit. They decided that they would have to sell off Bombay Local. We knew we couldn't let this chance go and bought the place ourselves! Our own cafe, our dream of having a business of our own in Himachal had now a reality. We named it Cho Cho's Cafe as cho cho means elder brother in the Tibetan language, something that my sister and I hadn't had in our lives but would now be symbolized by this cafe, this was the of our infinite faith and hard work. Nearly a year later, my sister and brother-in-law also moved to Bir and started their cafe named Ambar. Our family's mountain life was not a romantic thought but a reality we lived, breathed and experienced.

Looks like your family and you got the long pending happy ending you had all been waiting for! What's next for you? And, what would your learning be from this entire journey?

Haha yes, we luckily got what we had been seeking for so many years! Maybe our Dharamshala chapter was meant to lay the route for us to lay our roots in Bir. From fretting over surviving on a Rs 10,000 salary to actually kick-starting our own cafes in the mountains, the whole process has been an unforgettable one. I am finally pursuing my B.Ed. which had been on hold for ages. The family didn't need me anymore and it was time for me to go after what I want as well.

My key learning through this journey was of course, patience. Patience in communicating and teaching in ways I hadn't fathomed, patience in knowing my humble income would see us through until we grew and patience in believing that our desire of carving a life in the mountains would happen.

They say, "seek and you shall find", however, for us, we sought, fought for it and eventually got what we wanted. Along the way I was blessed to find 74 kids who will always be a part of my life and family.

You can follow Tanya's journey on Instagram @mere_jazbaat.

You can say hi to the writer @migrantmusings.