Their hall tickets secured to their transparent clipboards, four teenagers hopped into an open green trolley in Pithoragarh’s Gharuri village with practised ease. Around 150 metres across the turbid Gori Ganga, a school teacher tugged the trolley’s rope.
Getting an education is no child’s play in Uttarakhand’s Gharuri village. In fact, the locals rely on the trolley bridge “for everything” — from rations and dairy to education.
While most middle and senior school students from the village walk around 2 km to their school daily after the trolley ride, since last month, all board students have been trekking nearly 2.5 km to their centre, the Government Inter College in Lumti.
Installed atop an old abutment (a support structure for a bridge), the trolley is the easiest way to get around in Gharuri, where the nearest pedestrian bridge is located at least 8 km away. Of Uttarakhand’s 3,333 bridges and 30 trolleys, the maximum (13) are located in Pithoragarh.
riyanka Samant has been taking the trolley to school for nearly five years now. (Express Photo by Aiswarya Raj)
Tugging at the rope to bring the empty trolley to her side, Priyanka Samant, 15, who, like the other girls, is in her chequered kurta uniform, said, “I was 10 years old when I boarded the gharari (trolley) for the first time. It was scary at first.”
In January this year, a video of the students taking the trolley across the Gori Ganga, dotted with mammoth rocks following a massive landslide in the village in 2020, went viral on social media. This prompted the Public Works Department (PWD) to direct local teachers to take turns to operate the trolley.
“When the children go to school now, they only need to pull the rope from one side. One teacher is on duty on the other side,” said Pushkar Singh, a local.
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For Bhavna Samant, 15, who was on the way to Lumti for her Class 10 board exams, the PWD directive has come as a source of relief. “Before the teachers were deputed, my arms would ache and my palms would get sore after tugging on the trolley’s rope,” she said.
Deepak Chand, a lab assistant at the school who is on trolley duty once a week, said they “discourage” children from attending school when it rains. Tugging the rope to help five students cross the river, he added, “It’s unsafe to take the trolley during monsoon since the area is landslide-prone.”
The primary school in Gharuri village has just three students and one teacher. (Express Photo by Aiswarya Raj)
A 2023 ISRO report confirms that the Pithoragarh-Khela-Malpa route is among the most susceptible to landslides in the state. The district has also been affected by cloudburst, flash floods and heavy rainfall.
The district was among the worst affected in the state during the 2013 deluge. Along with houses, locals say the river washed away a pedestrian bridge, cutting Gharuri village off from the entire region.
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Hari Chand, sarpanch, van panchayat, Gharuri, said, “The old bridge vanished in the 2013 floods. We could not cross the river for several days. Afterwards, we had to walk 9 km through the woods to cross the river. Then MLA (and former Chief Minister) Harish Rawat sanctioned a bridge in 2015, but only the pillars and abutment had come up by 2020. In July that year, a landslide destroyed the pillars. The trolley bridge was set up on the abutment after that.”
Claiming that the trolley bridge, which can ferry a total of 100 kg across the river at a time, was on the verge of getting “washed away”, he added, “The authorities have sanctioned a new bridge, but nothing has materialised so far.”
Most middle and senior school students from the village walk around 2 km to their school daily after the trolley ride. (Express Photo/Aiswarya Raj)
Rajesh Sharma, head, PWD, told The Indian Express that a new pedestrian bridge had been sanctioned for the area in 2024. “ We were ascertaining where the bridge should come up,” he said.
After the education department put teachers on trolley duty, sarpanch Chand said he wrote to the division in January, stating that this new duty was “disrupting” teaching.
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Stating that a reply is still awaited, Chand said his letter stated, “Until a permanent bridge is built, two Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel should be stationed at the site… Sick persons and pregnant women face difficulties in using the trolley, especially during the monsoon and at night.”
While pregnant women are taken to the trolley on a makeshift palanquin fashioned out of two logs, some elderly persons are carried all the way up by their children.
A 2023 ISRO report confirms that the Pithoragarh-Khela-Malpa route is among the most susceptible to landslides in the state. (Express Photo/Aiswarya Raj)
Gently lowering his father, 85, into the trolley, Chander Singh, 58, who carried him all the way up on his back, says his sons rarely come home for a visit. “One of my sons lives in Rudrapur (in Uttarakhand) and the other works in Dubai. They don’t want to come back to the village. Why would they? There is no public infrastructure here” he says.
For now, the only “public infrastructure” in the village is a primary school with three students and one teacher, who has been working there for 16 years now.
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While Uttarakhand has been pushing to plug migration from the hills, locals say the government’s focus has been on border villages like Mana and Jadung in Uttarkashi district. The issue of migration was raised during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the state too.
Sarpanch Chand says migration in the village spiked after the 2013 floods. Slamming the government, he says, “Lakhs are allocated under MPLADS (Members of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme) funds, but no one cares to build us a bridge. A motor bridge will not cost the government more than Rs 15 crore.”
Installed atop an old abutment (a support structure for a bridge), the trolley is the easiest way to get around in Gharuri, where the nearest pedestrian bridge is located at least 8 km away. (Express Photo/Aiswarya Raj)
Locals say migration will continue as infrastructure for education, health and transportation is not developed. “Which tourist will come to a homestay that is accessible only via a rickety trolley? Palayan mat karo, mat karo bolne se nahi rukta (words alone will not end migration),” says local resident Pushkar, adding that two people have died in trolley-related accidents so far.
Meanwhile, Congress’s Harish Dhami, the incumbent legislator from the Dharchula Assembly constituency, under which the village falls, says he has been raking up the issue of a bridge for Gharuri in the Assembly. “The PWD is yet to find a place to make the bridge. If migration is to be stopped, the government has to start by fixing these issues,” he says.
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Local resident Kesar Singh agrees, “Kitni pidhiyan chali gaye hai ek pul ke chakkar mein (multiple generations have left the village over the lack of one bridge),” he says.
Referring to the motor bridge that came up between Pithoragarh’s Dharchula and the neighbouring Nepal last year, he laments, “Videsh se desh ko jodne ke liye pul bane hain. Par desh ke andar logon ko jodne ke liye kuch nahi (bridges are being made to connect the country to nations abroad but not inside the country).”