Our love for the hills and the desire to share our learnings took us to Dwarahat, a beautiful hamlet situated in the Kumaon valley. The Kumaon Engineering College (KEC) situated here is the Alma Mater of many of my colleagues. When they came to know that they will be visiting their old college to share their learnings and experiences with their juniors, they were more than excited. Nobody can understand the problems of the current technical system in our country better than the people who have experienced it first hand. In this case, they were Vaibhav and Tushar. Now it was their turn to bring the change they always wished for. Realising the gap between the academia and industry, they knew sharing their experience will surely help many young minds.

After a long journey of 9 hours, we reached KEC Dwarahat, a place surrounded by serene hills and overlooked by a clear starry sky. It is at such moments we realise how much we love our job, travelling to beautiful places and working from there for few days is something we are always looking for, this is how we founded our office in Tehri.

Stargazing from Dwarahat.

Next day early morning we started with the first day of PHP Bootcamp. This Bootcamp was being run under CodeTrek, a free skilling initiative for students in hills. This is an extensive program in which the participants are given knowledge about the modern trends in software development and are exposed to hands-on coding experience. It was amazing to see the number of students who turned up for the Bootcamp. Young minds yearning to expand their skills and make a mark in this world, proves how much a program like CodeTrek is required in the hills.

All set for the BootCamp.

We had a short introductory interaction with the KEC students and realised that the issues faced by most colleges in the hills are the same. Being away from the modern development of the cities, they are still trying to catch up with the new trends and lack of industrial exposure. Due to this, they are not able to harness their best potential. Being from hills we had closely observed this problem ourselves. So when a couple of months back we heard the same problems during an interaction session with engineering students in our Tehri office, we decided to find a solution.Now months later when we saw the same resonance with students here, we knew CodeTrek was needed to solve these problems.

For the next three days, with every interaction, we worked on bridging the gap between the industry and the academics. We shared our knowledge about the modern software development practices that are followed in the industry. Through the practical implementation of these practices, students added a new perspective to the concepts they had only read in books until now. We provided them with a problem statement and asked them to first think of a technical solution for it on their own. The motive was to help them develop their problem-solving skills. To our surprise, unlike the common notion of students in hills missing out on exposure, the progress we saw in students was pretty good.

Vaibhav and Tushar, KEC Alumnus and mentors for the session, through their close mentorship, gave the participants a comfort to discuss their problems with them. Our guys tried their best to share their learnings with their juniors and inspire them to work for their dreams. There was an informality to these discussions, a kind affinity which is rarely found in any college workshops.

An informal interaction with the students with the sun-setting in the background.

On the last day, we met with KEC administration and academic team. Their support throughout the Bootcamp helped in successfully executing it. Before wrapping up the Bootcamp, the team gave a small chai-samosa surprise to the participants. Their happy surprised faces added up to our happiness.

On a trek you meet many people and share many stories, this is one such story which will always remain in our good memories. We came to KEC with the aim is to inspire new minds and give them something valuable, as this is how we make our trail. With this session, the trail has already begun. If you want to trek together and enhance your learning then come join us on this trail with CodeTrek.

Happy faces. This was more than a learning experience for all.