In the far north of India, a cold mountain desert that is sandwiched between two of the world’s tallest mountain ranges, Himalayas and Kunlun, can be seen.
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This is a land of extremes, where rainfall is scarce and temperatures range wildly from torrid to far below freezing. The locals say it’s the only place in the world where a man, sitting in the sun with his feet in the shade, can suffer sunstroke and frostbite at the same time.
Since rainfall is rare, farmers rely on melting snow and ice for water in irrigating the farmlands. But because of climate change, that land gets drier, which compromises the livelihood of the farmers.
A proposed solution for this problem is to make more glaciers.
In 2014 a local mechanical engineer, Sonam Wangchuk, set out to solve the water crisis of the Ladakh. […]
Wangchuk had a simple idea: he wanted to balance this natural deficit by collecting water from melting snow and ice in the cold months, which would normally go to waste, and store it until spring, just when farmers need it the most. […]
He then built a two-story prototype of an “ice stupa”, a cone of ice that he named after the traditional mound-like sacred monuments that are found throughout Asia.
For the ice stupa to build its first full-scale version, a budget of$125,000 is needed. Wangchuk said that, “It was too radical for any government to support, but I knew the people of the world would back it,”.
He decided to crowdfund the project, asking people for contributions through Indiegogo, a popular crowdfunding platform. The campaign was successful and piqued the interest of the local institutions: “Now that the idea has been proven, the Ladhaki government is incorporating it its development plans.”
Learn more about the artificial glacier over at CNN Style.
Image: Sonam Wangchuk
Source: neatorama