Eleven hours by road from the nearest train station, Sarmoli could be just another dreamy mountain village in the remote Uttarakhand Himalayas. Except it is not.

This hamlet in Munsiari has found a way to be modern without being urban. Thanks to the vision of avid mountaineer Malika Virdi, who now calls Sarmoli home, it is a place where the locals run a gruelling marathon that climbs 8,000ft over 20km; a village that has workshops as diverse as yoga, Wikipedia and birdwatching; where the women run homes, homestays and local enterprises.

Inspired by their organic way of life during my time in Sarmoli, I had a crazy idea of leveraging Instagram to encourage the locals to share their life with the world. And thus was born @VoicesofMunsiari – India’s first Instagram channel run entirely by village folk, despite limited connectivity and English. A channel where teens and adults share pictures and stories of things that matter to them: the 50-odd bird species in their backyard, the joy of school holidays and snow-filled winters, the challenge of keeping their spring water sources clean, and of course, the mountains that are home to them.







This bunch of storytellers hopes Instagram will take them places, and open a revenue stream to support a new outdoor education program in the village. It’s a crazy dream, but one that you can support. Here’s how to help:

Follow @VoicesofMunsiari on Instagram and encourage these Himalayan storytellers.

Got a spare smartphone? We are crowdsourcing phones with good quality cameras to enable more locals to share snippets of their lives in the Himalayas. If you’d like to contribute a spare smartphone, please drop an email here.

We are crowdsourcing phones with good quality cameras to enable more locals to share snippets of their lives in the Himalayas. If you’d like to contribute a spare smartphone, please drop an email here. Join the photography+Instagram workshop in Sarmoli this May: Stay in the women-led Sarmoli homestays and explore photography and Instagram in this beautiful mountain village. If you’d like to lead a photography workshop, please get in touch.

Shivya Nath is a travel blogger and digital nomad, who spent a month in Sarmoli. Read her experience here.