Living in the city Ugyen (Sherab Dorji) is finishing his teacher training and dreaming of going to Australia with his guitar - he has decided he doesn't really want to be a teacher. He is under contract to do his first year as a teacher and gets assigned to the remotest school in the country, probably the world. It is 8 days hike from the end of the bus line at a town with 486 inhabitants. Lunana, the village with 46 people including 9 children, has a one room schoolhouse and all the villagers are delighted to see him. Ugyen not so much delighted to be there.

After initially saying he could not teach there and arranging to go back in two days the children ask him to stay and his sense of duty takes over.

He turns out to be the best teacher they've ever had, and he settles in to the life, but when winter is coming he has to go back down as there is no school once the snows come and no access to the outside world. He almost insists on staying - there is also an inciient relationship with a young woman yak herder who is teaching him to sing the very difficult mountain song. But in the end they send him down.

Finally we see him singing in a bar in Sydney and breaking out of the routine pop songs to sing the mountain song to the bemused and then enthralled Aussies. Did he go back? We don't know.