At an altitude of almost 4,000m, receiving almost no rainfall, the Himalayan village of Sakti is a hostile place to be a farmer. Gelak Gutme has been growing wheat, peas and potatoes there for most of his 65 years. "It is a desert with an extreme climate," he says. Conditions have become worse in his lifetime. Global warming means that the smaller, low altitude glaciers they relied on to water their crops have disappeared.
"Now there is scarcity of water. Last year I lost everything - my entire field got dried due of lack of water," Gutme says. For generations, small glaciers sitting right above the valleys acted as frozen water towers, holding water all winter and releasing it when spring farming began. But according to Lobzang Fardod, a member of a local water management committee, those lower glaciers have completely vanished into a desert of dry rock, leaving nothing to melt.
“Himalayan farmers are building artificial glaciers to water crops as global warming destroys natural ice.”
The mountain summer is short, so farmers must plant by May or risk losing crops to winter. A reliable water source in early spring is crucial. In the early 2010s, some Ladakh villages attempted to create their own reservoirs of ice. The system involved piping water from higher up in the mountains during winter and spraying it into the air, where it would freeze and over time form large towers of ice, called ice stupas. They successfully supplied melt water in the spring, but were a "nightmare" to manage under harsh winter conditions, says Fardod.
When temperatures dropped quickly below minus 20C, or sometimes minus 30C, water in the pipes was liable to freeze, cracking the pipes and ruining the system. To guard against that, during winter teams of four or five farmers would camp high up, near the water source, rushing to any potential blockages with boiling water, often during the night when temperature drops were most likely.
But those freezing, winter nights high in the mountains could be phased out. "Because traditional water systems are failing, Leh-Ladakh has become a hub for innovative, grassroots hydraulic engineering," says Murtaza Ali, executive engineer in the Irrigation and Flood Control Division, at the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a disputed region in Indian-administered Kashmir that is sandwiched between China to the east and Pakistan to the west.
As well as the potential for cracked pipes, the ice stupa system was not very efficient, says Ali. Because water flowed constantly, on warmer days fresh water would melt the ice that had already formed.