Page 88 - EarthHeroes

help him, he built his first experimental glacier in a valley above the village
of Phutskey. As soon as winter ended, Chewang hiked up the mountain to check
on his work. As he approached the valley, he paused, hardly daring to look . . . then
his face broke into a smile . . . then a grin. The valley was covered in a sheet of ice – his first artificial glacier! When the ice
melted that spring, the villagers were so amazed and happy to have water that they
later helped him build the walls and channels to make an even bigger glacier, to provide more water
the following year.
In 1995, Chewang retired from his job, but he was not satisfied with staying at home. The water shortages were
being made worse in Leh by the increased number of tourists, who expected showers and flush toilets, which used up precious
water from underground. Water was being trucked in to the city and the harvest had been so poor that there had been grain
rationing. Chewang wanted to put his engineering skills to good use, so he took up a position as the head of a charity called the Leh Nutrition
Project and threw himself into helping as many villages as he could by building artificial glaciers.
Over the next 20 years, Chewang built 14 more artificial glaciers in Ladakh. While he managed to get funding from the Indian government and not-for- profit organisations, the biggest challenge was often getting villagers to support his ‘crazy’ project. The glaciers had to be created differently depending on the landscape and available shade, and Chewang needed their local knowledge
to plan each one. But even in his seventies he still liked to hike up and camp overnight in the mountains to get to know the area himself.
Once local people understood how artificial glaciers could help them, they were happy to get involved. Without easy access to machinery and equipment, work was mostly done by hand using labourers and volunteers. Sometimes
the whole village would help, including grandparents, although it often
meant carrying building materials on their backs through steep terrain and working with the ever-present danger of rockfalls.
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