Situated at 1,664 metres in the Agastyamuni block of Rudraprayag district, this small village of Maniguh in Uttarakhand commands sweeping views of peaks including Chaukhamba, Satopanth, and Thalay Sagar. 

But what sets Maniguh apart from the many beautiful hill villages of Devbhoomi is not its altitude or its panorama. It is the fact that, on any given day, you are as likely to find a child absorbed in a book by a mountain path as you are to find one on a screen.

Maniguh holds the distinction of being Uttarakhand's first ‘library village’, a designation earned through years of steady, community-driven work by the Hamara Gaon Ghar Foundation. This non-profit conceived and built this ecosystem of reading from the ground up.

Inside Maniguh’s 20,000-book treasure 

The centrepiece of the Library Village initiative is the Maniguh Central Library, known locally as Pustak Tirth, which houses a collection of over 20,000 books. 

The range is striking for a rural hill community: the shelves carry titles in Hindi, English, Urdu, Sanskrit, Kashmiri, and Punjabi, spanning subjects from science to literature, history, competitive examination preparation, and children's fiction. 

Rare books from the Naval Kishore Press, dating between 1800 and 1905, are also preserved here, giving the collection an archival dimension that extends well beyond a community reading room.

Access is entirely free of cost. The library remains open on all working days throughout the year, serving school students, competitive exam aspirants, women returning to education, and curious visitors in equal measure. 

Reading spaces that follow you up the mountain

What makes the Library Village model distinctive is that it does not confine reading to a single building. The Hamara Gaon Ghar........

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