A photo series on ice stupas — artificial glaciers in the northern Indian Himalayas — recently won first place in the 2024-25 Onewater’s Walk of Water: Water Towers photo story contest. Ice stupas are towering man-made ice structures engineered to store winter water and provide irrigation during the dry summer months.
Slovenian photographer Ciril Jazbec captured these impressive structures in India’s high-altitude Ladakh region, where farming communities on the frontlines of climate change have adapted to retreating glaciers and reduced snow melt by building their own glaciers. The massive piles of ice remain long into the spring and summer months when villagers need water for irrigation.
The stupas are constructed using pipes and valves that sprinkle “water like a fountain and immediately freezes water drops,” Tashi Angchuckk, a villager from Igoo, told Mongabay in July 2024.
“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,” Angchuckk added. “To cultivate them, we need assured irrigation at the time of sowing.”
To date, dozens of ice stupas have been built across villages in Ladakh’s cold desert, supplying water to hundreds of hectares of farmland in a region that receives just 100 mm (4 inches) of annual rainfall.
The largest ice stupa, Shara Phuktsey, stands 33.5 meters (110 feet) high and can store up to 7.5 million liters (2 million gallons) of water, serving four villages.
Ladakhi engineer Sonam Wangchuk, who pioneered the first ice stupas in 2013, warns that the structures are not a long-term solution. In October 2024, he led a 15-day hunger strike urging the Indian government to grant Ladakh constitutional protections against climate change and unchecked development.
The contest, which drew more than 600 entries, was organized by Onewater in partnership with UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Programme.
Banner image: An ice stupa in Ladakh’s Karith village. Image courtesy of Ciril Jazbec for Onewater.
