Located in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, it is a 5-hour drive from Delhi – theoretically! Founded by Satish Ranjan Das, one of pre-independent India’s most eminent barristers and a member of the Executive Council of the Viceroy of India, the Doon School was formally inaugurated on October 27, 1935 by Lord Willingdon, the Governor-General and Viceroy of India at the time. The British Board of Education selected Arthur Foot, a master at Eton College and also a keen climber, as The Doon School’s first Headmaster. Arthur Foot, who had never visited India before accepting the position, once explained how it all happened for him:

When I first heard that there was to be a school at Dehradun .... I took out my Times Atlas and looked up Dehradun. I found it an area that was light brown and capped by some patches of white. I at once applied for the post of Headmaster, knowing that I would be able to arrange my timetable so that I could motor up to the foot of a glacier on Friday after school, climb a peak on Saturday and return comfortably on Sunday ...." 

But running a new school left him with little or no time to climb. He recruited John Martyn, a master at Harrow and also a lover of mountains, as his deputy, and later brought in Jack Gibson in 1937, and RL Holdsworth (Holdie) in 1940 – this trinity was to take The Doon School to dizzying heights – literally! And in many other ways too. They were teachers, climbers – and bachelors. Many of their pupils became lifelong mountaineers.