In the far north of India, a cold mountain desert is the stunning backdrop to an unprecedented icy structure.
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.
It's the Ladakh region --
meaning "land of high passes" -- sandwiched between two of the world's
tallest mountain ranges, the Himalayas and the Kunlun.
Rainfall
is rare here. Water, essential for irrigating the farmlands that are
the lifeblood of the local population, mostly comes from melting snow
and ice.
But climate change is making this land even drier,
leaving farmers without water in the crucial planting months of April
and May, right before the glaciers start to melt in the summer sun.
One man's solution to the problem? Make more glaciers.
The "Ice Stupa"
In 2014 a local mechanical engineer, Sonam Wangchuk, set out to solve the water crisis of the Ladakh.
The
natural glaciers, which are shrinking due to rising global
temperatures, therefore they provide far less water in early spring but
then release a lot in the summer heat, shrinking even more.
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.
"I once saw ice
under a bridge in May and understood that it's the sun that makes the
ice melt, not ambient temperature," he told CNN.
"I realized that ice can last a long time, even at low altitudes."
He
then build 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.
Why a cone?
The
ice stupa is created using no power or pumps, only physics: "the
ingredients are a downstream, an upstream and a gradient," says
Wangchuk.
First, a pipe is laid
underground, connecting a stream of water and the location where the ice
stupa is required, usually next to a village. The water must come from a
higher altitude, usually around 60 meters or more.
Because
a fluid in a system always wants to maintain its level, water from 60
meters upstream will spray 60 meters into the air out of the downstream
pipe, creating a fountain.
The
freezing air temperature does the rest, immediately crystallizing the
water droplets into ice that falls right below, forming a cone.
"A
cone is very easy to make with ice, because any dripping naturally
forms a cone underneath -- icicles are inverted cones," says Wangchuk.
But a cone has more desirable properties: "It has minimal exposed surface area for the volume of water it contains."
That
means it melts very slowly: the prototype, 20 feet tall and containing
150,000 liters of water, lasted from winter until mid-May, just when
water is needed for irrigation, while all the surrounding ice on the
ground had gone by the end of March.
Last ice standing
The revolutionary aspect of the ice stupa is that it works even at low altitude and in very warm temperatures.
It's
not the first type of artificial glacier in the area, but previous
endeavors in this area were only attempted above 13,000 feet (or 4,000
meters) by freezing waters in large canals which required shade and a
lot of maintenance, and were located too far away from the fields to be
practical.
Instead, the conical shape of the ice stupa can withstand even direct sunlight and it can sit right were the water is required.
However,
they are not maintenance-free: "Currently they need a lot of manual
intervention: the fountains can freeze when the pipes ice up, things
like that," says Wangchuk.
He hopes
that soon, by refining the technology, the stupas will become more
reliable. That's why he's going to start testing in Peru this summer,
taking advantage of an extra winter in the southern hemisphere.
"We
are at a stage similar to motor cars in the 1950s, when drivers had to
often open the bonnet and fix things. Nowadays the driver doesn't even
know what's inside the bonnet, we are moving towards that," he says.
"In the meantime, we can grow trees where trees would never grow because the land was too dry."
A crowdfunding effort
How much does it cost to build an ice stupa?
Because
of the piping infrastructure required, the initial investment can be
steep. Wangchuck estimated he would need around $125,000 to build his
first full-scale version, which could reach 80 feet in height and
provide irrigation to about 10 hectares of land: "It was too radical for
any government to support, but I knew the people of the world would
back it," he says.
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."
The ice stupa also netted Wangchuk a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2016, which carried a 100,000 Swiss Franc prize (around $105,000).
But
Wangchuk also dreams of turning the stupas into tourist attractions, by
building ice bars and ice hotels inside them: "It will be an exclusive
experience for people who are willing to pay for it, and the money will
support the water for the farmers eliminating the shortage in the
spring, which is what every farmer fears," he says.
This
might sound a bit like mixing the sacred and the profane, but Wangchuk
thinks the ice stupa itself is a bridge between different cultures.
"We
wanted to integrate traditional practices and beliefs with innovative
technology, because climate change cannot be handled by engineering
alone," he says.
"We have to join forces."
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