Ladakh is a mountainous high-altitude desert in Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of India. With scarce access to water, the region is extremely vulnerable to changes in climate. The effects of global warming are disproportionately felt in this area, including an overall warming trend across the region and reduced precipitation. Due to these warmer temperatures, glacial melt in Ladakh is rapidly accelerating; particularly in the months of October, November and December. Historically, glaciers would freeze during these winter months and streams would slow to a trickle. This was a good thing, as it kept scarce freshwater resources intact until they were needed in the spring months for planting crops.

As I learned, that is no longer the case. Warmer winters mean that streams and rivers continue to flow with precious freshwater reserves, wasting away down the Indus River valley (and ultimately draining into Bangladesh).

But two men had an idea. In a remarkable effort to capture this excess runoff and save it until the spring, a Ladakhi engineer and a Buddhist monk came together and invented the idea of ‘ice stupas’. By channeling the glacial runoff into giant ice pyramids (ice ‘stupas’), they could freeze and store the freshwater throughout the winter. The ice stupas melt in the spring, providing water to villagers in the critical months of April and May - just when crops and fields need irrigating.

Note: I went to Ladakh with a film crew in 2016 to capture this story, when the Ice Stupa Project was newly forming. They have since gone on to win many awards (including the Rolex Award for Enterprise) and have been covered in several different media outlets. Read this great feature in The New Yorker from 2019.