How automated ice stupas could become a lifeline in remote parts of Leh

It is early July and Tashi Angchuck, 59, is having a busy morning. He checks the valves fitted on a thick plastic pipeline and notes down the metre reading of water flow.

Every drop of water counts in Igoo, Angchuk’s village 40 kilometres from Leh, the capital of Ladakh, which is a high-altitude cold desert in the northernmost part of India.

Igoo, spread across 13km in the rocky mountainous terrain of the Himalayas, houses 220 families. “Summers are crucial for villagers as the wheat, mustard, potato, and green peas we grow between April and July see us through the entire year. To cultivate them, we need assured irrigation at the time of sowing,” Angchuck tells Mongabay India. Ice stupas are a source of that precious water for them, he says.

Ice stupas are conical artificial glaciers built to store winter water in the form of ice. They melt in the summer months, providing timely irrigation water to farmers.

But the ice stupa 59-year-old Angchuck is referring to is no ordinary ice stupa; it is an automated ice reservoir or an ice stupa that runs “automatically”.

“The automated ice reservoir, built last winter, is a one-of-its-kind structure in Ladakh. It has sensors on its pipeline with an attached control board that makes...

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