A long line of walkers climbing a hillside path above a river valley

Yamuna Yatra

From where it originates and is pristine, down to the point where it reaches Agra and is almost a toxic body of water. Twelve days.

What we do

Twelve days and a thousand kilometres, downstream, from the source to Agra.

30⁺ Yatras run since 2004 10,000⁺ Young people through the Yatra since 2004

What it sets out to do

Go the way the river goes

In order, from the top, at walking pace. The objective is that the middle cannot be left out, and the middle is the part that makes the case.

Run it often enough to be a record

Thirty-odd repetitions of the same route is what makes this evidence rather than an expedition. One walk is an anecdote.

Get inside a curriculum

What we are aiming at is a school that builds a graded year around it, because a curriculum outlives whoever argued for it.

Send back witnesses

Most arguments about this river are conducted about one stretch of it. The intent is people who have stood at both ends and can say so.

The Yamuna running fast over rocks below Himalayan slopes

The river makes the argument.

Pristine at Yamunotri, almost a toxic body of water by Agra. Twelve days is how long that sentence takes to land, and we only walk beside it.

Strategy and activities

Twelve days, one direction

The Yatra goes the river's way — downstream, Himalaya to plain. Nothing is flown over and nothing is skipped, so the change in the water happens in front of you instead of on a slide.

It has been run more than thirty times

Since 2004: the same twelve days, the same direction, a different set of young people each time. That repetition is the method. One river, described by ten thousand people who have seen all of it.

The rest of how it runs

For one school it is coursework

Vasant Valley School made the Yatra part of its Grade XI annual curriculum. That changes what the twelve days are — there is reading before it and work after it, and a student cannot opt out of the argument by enjoying the trip.

It is run with schools and with embassies

Schools bring the cohort. The American Embassy, the British Council and the European Union have stood behind it.

Who it is for

Young leaders

More than ten thousand of them have walked it since 2004. Twelve days is long, and the programme is built for people who will use it afterwards.

Schools that will build a year around it

One school put the Yatra inside a graded year, with reading before it and work after.

Anybody who has only met the Delhi stretch

The river is pristine where it starts. Almost everybody who holds an opinion about the Yamuna has only seen the part that runs past a city.

Impact

30⁺

Yatras run

since 2004

10,000⁺

Young people through the Yatra

since 2004

Thirty Yatras, ten thousand walkers

Over thirty Yatras since 2004, and more than ten thousand youth leaders down the whole thousand kilometres.

It became a curriculum

A school putting the Yatra inside its Grade XI year is the strongest outcome the programme has, because a curriculum outlives the people who argued for it.