Nothing idiotic about this idea!

Necessity is the mother of invention, always! Ladakh, which is the rain shadow of the Himalayas is dry and arid, it is known as the high-altitude desert. For us it is a beautiful destination to visit but for the locals there, water is scarce. The main source of water is the winter snowfall and like us trying to work on capturing and storing rain water during monsoon, one individual is working on the same concept but with snow.

Sonam Wangchuk, the innovator from Ladakh on whose character Aamir Khan played the main protagonist in 3 Idiots, has come up with a brilliant idea. He and his team raising ice stupas in the region. They will be working hard, which began in November till March by which time winter ends and Wangchuk hopes to have completed seven stupas. The idea – capture water by raising ice stupas.

Wangchuk had once come across a big chunk of ice protected from the sun underneath the bridge in the month of May. This gave him the idea of building conical ice mounds with minimal surface area.

The ice stupas are formed using glacial water brought from higher ground through buried pipes, whose final section rises vertically. As pressure builds in the pipe, the water exits from the raised tip into sub-zero air and freezes as it plunges to gradually form an ice cone or stupa, much like the Tibetan religious stupas dotting the landscape. In late-spring the melt water is collected in large tanks, and then fed to cultivated fields using drip-irrigation

In 2014, Wangchuk and his men successfully built a 7-m tall prototype ice stupa, which lasted until the second week of May. In 2015, the ice stupa grew to a height of 20 m and lasted till early July, supplying one million litres of melted water to 5,000 saplings planted by the villagers and monks.

Wish another movie is made on this marathon effort of Wangchuk. What an individual – complete salute to Wangchuk!