Kaaya: Experience · Engage · Express

Tilwari village · Himalayan foothills · Dehradun

It's about re-imagining.

A mud-built campus where rural and urban communities meet and learn from each other. Kaaya asks whether a village can be a place of learning, living and innovation, by building on tradition rather than replacing it.

Kaaya is less a place that teaches than a place that is still learning.

A clay cup resting in a niche of a mud wall at Kaaya
A niche in a mud wall, Kaaya campus.

One coin, two faces

Kaaya Offline · the engine

Come and feel it

A meal at the café, a night in a mud cottage, a Sunday brunch, a jar from the Farmer's Market, a painting off the gallery wall. Everything there is real, and you only get it when you visit.

kaaya-offline.com ↗
Kaaya.org · the purpose

What the place is for

The work with the village, the land and the climate: the people who keep the campus running, the community kitchen, the smart-village centre, fellowships for young people. And what all of it is teaching us.

How the two sustain each other →

What is earned offline sustains the work here. What the work makes and learns is why the offline side is worth a visit.

Inside Kaaya

Community and climate

Work across a twelve-village cluster: the smart-village centre at Tilwari, the Sunday Market, women's groups processing what the land grows, springs and soil.

Read about the work

Fellowships

Padav for young Himalayan artists, the Anutraaya incubation, internships for local youth, and volunteers who come to help and stay to learn.

Meet the fellowships

Learning Centre

Mud buildings, a hall, an amphitheatre and the village around them. Groups and institutions come for workshops, exposure visits and partnerships.

See the space

Journal

Stories from the campus and the village, and the open questions we are still working through.

Read the Journal

From the Journal

Kaaya's Rural-Urban Connect Model: How Value Moves Both Ways
9 November 2026

Kaaya's Rural-Urban Connect Model: How Value Moves Both Ways

Kaaya runs on exchanges that go both ways. Money is one of them, but so are food, knowledge, care, attention and trust. Looking back, we came to see that when each party gains…

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When the Farmer Became the Teacher
6 November 2026

When the Farmer Became the Teacher

Kaaya began with an admission: we didn't know much. We came to the village wanting to grow food, keep cattle and save seed, and soon found that none of it could be learned from a…

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Building Kaaya, Building Community: The 2013 Kedarnath Tragedy
6 November 2026

Building Kaaya, Building Community: The 2013 Kedarnath Tragedy

In June 2013, the monsoon brought a calamity to the Kedar valley that took thousands of lives. It called for a humanitarian response unlike anything these mountains had seen.…

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All Journal posts →
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