To the Still Waters — and Back

On the evening of May 24, nineteen young people from Grades 9 and 10 boarded a bus at Prakriti School and headed north into the night.

We were going to Brigu Lake — a glacial tarn at 4,300 metres, held sacred to Sage Bhrigu, sitting behind snowfields in the Pir Panjal mountain range of the Himalayas above Manali. We didn’t yet know what the mountain would ask of them. By the time we returned six days later, we did.

Above Gulaba, the trail rose through oak and silver birch, then broke into open alpine pasture, and then, further still, into snow, real snow. The kind that doesn’t negotiate. At altitude, the air thins, the legs grow heavy, and the mind becomes the last thing standing between you and stopping.

On Day 3, the night brought in roaring winds clapping like thunder against the mountain that threatened the tents, but they lasted.

The Push on Day 4 was the hardest stretch, an early-morning climb with inadequate sleep to Brighu Lake itself at 4,300 metres. Cold air. Thin oxygen.

As we saw it from afar, the first snow mountain which stood in our way, a steep climb to tackle right at the start, with trekkers moving slowly and carefully, almost inching like snails, it was a daunting task which all the children embraced.

And as we climbed on, drawing on self-belief and sometimes lying to ourselves—climbing through mountain after mountain of doubt, fatigue, and snow—we pressed forward with persistence, pushing past our limits. Ultimately, the team reached our summit: some to the shores of Bhrigu Lake itself, and almost all to a place where we could be deeply proud of the trek, and the profound journey we took within ourselves.

One learner came back thinking about trust — specifically, the hardest kind: trusting yourself. Not the confident, easy version of self-trust, but the kind you have to locate in the middle of exhaustion, when doubt is loudest and the summit feels furthest away.

Another sat with the uncomfortable question of when to give up — and found, perhaps surprisingly, that knowing when to stop is not a weakness. The mountain teaches this honestly. Not everything is meant to be forced. Wisdom lives in that distinction too.

For someone else, it was self-belief — the discovery that it exists in you even when you can’t feel it. That it shows up not before the hard moment, but during it.

One reflection was the most quietly honest of all: lying to yourself. Sometimes, on a steep snowfield at altitude, the only way forward is a small fiction — just a few more steps, just a little further — and then another, and another, until you look back and realise the lie carried you further than the truth ever could have. Fourteen-year-olds don’t usually talk about this. This one did.

Pushing beyond your limits, said another, is what keeps you mentally locked in. Not recklessly — but deliberately crossing the edge of what feels possible is precisely what expands it. The mind, it turns out, updates its map only when you walk off the edge of the old one.

Pacing yourself was someone else’s lesson — and the more nuanced insight underneath it: that you can change your mind and still stay consistent. These aren’t opposites. Adjusting your pace isn’t quitting. Slowing down isn’t giving up. Staying on the trail, in whatever way you can, is the whole point.

And one learner brought back something that sounds simple but rarely is: focusing on yourself. Not in a selfish sense, but in the sense of releasing the constant, exhausting comparison — to others’ speed, others’ ease, others’ apparent certainty. Up on the mountain, stripped of screens and the usual mirrors of worth, that learner found what it felt like to simply move at their own pace, in their own body, toward their own summit.

The expedition was built around five arcs — Opening, Courage, Challenge, Stillness, and Homecoming. The children didn’t just move through the landscape. We moved through something internal: doubt giving way to effort, effort giving way to endurance, endurance giving way to a stillness that only arrives when you’ve truly pushed.

The descent, the ancient Hidimba Temple in the Deodar groves, the Talent Night around the fire, and the long overnight drive home brought them full circle — back to school, but not quite the same people who had left.

One lake that asked everything of them, and gave back more.

The Pathfinder Expedition was part of Prakriti School’s Outdoor Learning Experience programme. This year’s trek was undertaken by 19 learners from Grades 9 and 10, accompanied by school facilitators and trained mountaineering instructors.