Tag: himalayas

In February this year, 45 people headed towards jewellery shops in Rohru, a town in Himachal Pradesh. But shopping was not their agenda. The group was a squad of forest rangers, guards and van mitras, on a mission, Operation Clawing Back, to raid shops to seize jewellery allegedly made ...

Pakistan has moved decisively to internationalise India’s decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. In the last week of April, Islamabad took the matter to the United Nations Security Council, shifting the dispute from a bilateral argument to a test of international law, treaty obligation and institutional ...

Colour is at the heart of Kashmir’s textile traditions, especially for the world renowned Pashmina shawls and Kashmir silks. Yet producing these rich hues often comes with an environmental cost to ecosystems.Studies show that many textile industries use synthetic dyes during dyeing and printing processes. When wastewater from these ...

Accelerating glacial retreat in the Himalayas over the past decades is threatening over 2 billion people in the region who depend on meltwater from the “water tower of Asia” for their daily needs, according to climate scientists.Glaciers in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region have been losing ice at ...

In 2022, as the number of Covid-19 cases began falling and travel opened up again, 30-year-old Irshit Ali’s life changed. There was a sudden surge of tourists in his hometown of Ladakh, where he worked ferrying tourists in his van. This was good for business. His monthly income went ...

Buckwheat, once grown mostly in marginal soil in the Indian Himalayas, is now regaining attention for its nutritional properties and its ability to grow in harsh mountain conditions where other crops fail. Apart from being a dependable food source, the crop’s abundant flowers support beekeeping, leading to the production ...

There is also a long-term problem that is often overlooked. Sediments trapped behind dams are not permanently “lost” to the river system. Over time, rivers naturally redistribute this material downstream, rebuilding floodplains and reinforcing banks. The idea of “maximum utilisation” of water sounds efficient, but it reflects a narrow ...

New Delhi: High in the Himalayas, with icy peaks and unforgiving valleys, India is changing its frontier with China. Roads are being constructed in the mountains, tunnels are piercing through rock, bridges are rising over gorges and airstrips are taking built where only silence once existed. This massive construction ...

On a cold January morning in the high-altitude region of Spiti in the Indian Himalayas, a team of researchers set out to study the disappearing snow in the mountains. Along the trail, they stopped to talk with yak herders who had spent their lives watching the snow come and ...

It was the middle of the night when the call from a family friend came, warning Abhishek Nautiyal and his family that they had to immediately leave their home in Joshimath, a small Himalayan mountain town in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand.The message was simple: Get out — ...