Dehradun, Nov. 10 -- My legs remembered the climb before I did. That particular ache up the calves, the old reflex of leaning into the turn by the tuck shop. I graduated from Woodstock in 2019, and for seven years I've told people, half-jokingly, that this school's first real lesson was cardiovascular endurance. Walking back up that same incline last month, I felt closer to disbelief than nostalgia. I wasn't visiting anymore. I was climbing up to interview the man now sitting in the oldest, most storied office on this hillside, the latest custodian of a legacy that stretches back 170 years.

Woodstock's story began in 1854, when three women arrived in Landour and started a school for girls. What they built has since outlasted the East Ind...