Photo Essay | Durga Kami, Nepal’s 68-Year-Old Student

He is currently in grade 10, and his classmates refer to him as Kami “baa” or ‘father’ in Nepali.

Durga Kami, 68, ready to walk down for an hour to attend his Grade 10 classes at the local school in Nepal. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

It’s never too late to go to school, believes Durga Kami, 68. He walks for over an hour everyday to go to school with his fellow 14-year-old classmates; finishing school had always been a dream, so after a decade of being a widower, he decided to go back to the classroom. He lives alone in his hilltop one-room house in Syangja, Nepal and learnt to read and write at the Naharay Primary School, before finishing his fifth grade with 11-year-old classmates.

Quint Lens brings to you a selection of pictures from this refreshing photo essay with an eye for detail by Navesh Chitrakar for Reuters: Nepal’s 68-year-old student.

Durga Kami, 68, who is studying tenth grade at Shree Kala Bhairab Higher Secondary School, posing with classmates outside their classroom in Syangja, Nepal, 6 June 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Nepalese grandfather Durga Kami brushes his bushy white beard, puts on his school uniform and, with the aid of his walking stick, trudges for over an hour to class for another day of learning.

Kami looks into a mirror as he combs his beard while getting ready for school in Syangja, Nepal, 5 June 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Kami has promised his classmate Sagar Thapa that he will cut his beard off if he passes the tenth grade.

Kami puts on his school uniform, which was provided by the school for free, as he gets ready for school in Syangja, Nepal. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Kami poses for a picture wearing his school uniform at the door of his one-room house in Syangja, Nepal. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Kami puts his hand on a book as he attends a class in Syangja, Nepal, 5 June 2016. He said he wanted to study until his death, adding he hoped it would encourage others to ignore age obstacles. “If they see an old person with white beard like me studying in school they might get motivated as well,” he said. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

An English notebook belonging to Kami, 6 June 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Walking into the Shree Kala Bhairab higher secondary school and the buzz created by 200 children is a welcome contrast to the hush of the isolated one-room home, with its leaking roof and frequent power cuts, where Kami lives in Syangja district, some 250 km (155 miles) west of Nepal’s capital Kathmandu. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

“I used to think ‘why is this old man coming to school to study with us?’ but as time passed I enjoyed his company,” Kami’s 14-year-old class mate Sagar Thapa said. “He is a little bit weak in studies compared to us but we help him out with that.”

Kami uses a torch to read a book during a power cut, at his one-room house in Syangja, Nepal, 4 June 2016. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

Kami is seen through the window as he prepares dinner for himself at his one room house in Syangja, Nepal, 4 June 2016. He has lived here alone since his wife died 15 years ago. (Photo: Reuters/Navesh Chitrakar)

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(This photo essay has been published in arrangement with Reuters.)

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