Gallery: Ladakh ice stupas

The landscape of Ladakh in northern India resembles a moonscape. Extremely arid, it has an average annual rainfall of 50-60 millimetres. Like many mountainous regions, Ladakh has experienced severe glacier shrinkage and consequently much reduced water supply especially for remote communities who depend on glacial meltwater in the early spring for irrigation. The idea of an ice stupa was introduced in the winter of 2013/14, when Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer and founder of the progressive educational institute SECMOL (Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), conceived the idea of vertical water storage structures that could be used for irrigation. We visited Ladakh in January and February 2020, and explored a number of villages where ice stupas have been built with varying degrees of success. In some, the villagers had given up because the pipes and spray head kept freezing. At the other end of the spectrum, we observed a magnificent 36-metre stupa at the village of Igoo. Ice stupas are no panacea to resolving the water scarcity issues for the people of Ladakh. Nevertheless, much has been learnt about their engineering, and crucially they are a Ladakhi invention. The chances are that they, if anyone, will figure out how to make them work in the manner intended. The Ladakhi ice stupa engineers show outstanding skill and resourcefulness. At this stage, perhaps the main impact of ice stupas is that they have helped develop awareness of, and the need to actually do something to combat rapidly changing climatic conditions. They have certainly put Ladakh on the map as a serious contender in this global fight. It is plain that Ladakhis are developing a unique engineering competency that others may look towards in the future.

An ice stupa made in the 2019-20 winter by the villagers of Phyang during the 2020 Ice Stupa Competition, an initiative to spread the art of glacier grafting. The ice stupa is 26m high and stores an estimated seven million litres of water. Phyang was also the site of the first full-scale ice stupa in 2014-15. The Rinpoche (head lama) of Phyang Monastery donated 180 acres of barren village land to establish a university for mountain youth, HIAL (Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh), with the purpose of fusing indigenous ideas with modern technology.