Kaaya is not running courses. It is not in the business of teaching. What happens here is closer to a shared inquiry — and the programmes below are invitations to join it, not enrol in it.
The dairy farmer who leads the milk journey knows what a cow eats, what it costs to keep her, what rate he receives, how purity is tested. He knows this because his livelihood depends on it. When students walk with him, they are not receiving instruction. They are entering a different relationship with knowledge — one the classroom was not designed to provide.
Programmes
1–5 days · Short immersions Curriculum-linked outdoor camps built around the seed journey, the milk journey, and the soil journey. Children work with their hands and return with a different sense of where food comes from.
1–5 weeks · Project residencies Students narrow in on a specific local challenge and work on it collaboratively alongside the community — not as observers, but as participants in real problem-solving.
Up to 6 months · Live projects & internships For college students and young professionals. The aim is not to apply what was learned in classrooms — but to discover what classrooms could not teach.
Summer · Digital detox camps Spaces for urban children to form genuine friendships, explore independently, and simply be in nature for a while. When children arrive from different schools, without existing hierarchies or shared histories, something else becomes possible. New friendships form not from habit but from genuine, unguarded exchange.
We also value unstructured time. We let children feel bored. Boredom, we have found, is where the roots of imagination lie dormant.
Hands-on sessions
These are not demonstrations. They are sessions for people who want to make something, learn something, or pay closer attention to the world around them.
Pottery — 3-hour sessions for groups up to 12. Working with clay, wheel, and kiln under local guidance.
Forest & eco trails — Guided walks through the surrounding landscape — streams, canopy, soil, and what lives in all of them.
Nature art classes — In collaboration with visiting practitioners. Making things from materials the land provides.
Farm day picnics — Outdoor-cooked meals in the mountains. Food grown nearby, prepared in the open air.
From the field
Why Send Your Kids to Kaaya? — On unstructured time, boredom, and why field context teaches what a classroom can’t.
Forest Fire — An Intern’s Experience — What happens when a programme curriculum gives way to an actual emergency.
Intern Speaks — A first-person account of two weeks spent learning vermicomposting, by hand.