These men skim the surface of the water, retrieving water weeds to use as fertilizer for their fields. Nothing in our natural world seems to be as complex or as fragile as the ecologies of our waterbodies. Nothing is more crucial to humanity's survival, and nothing about water's care and conservation can happen without care for the economic needs of the people who live beside it.
Poles, like honor guards, line the highway in Ladakh across the upper reaches of the Himalayas. Where ancient ripples in time are seen as geological folds, and clouds swoop low, there are shifting colours and sifting shadows, and nothing seems quite real. This is a high altitude desert, where the passenger jet planes land on strips 10,700 feet above sea level, with little or no rainfall in years past. Even though this land gives rise to the river Indus, from which the ancient Persians gave the subcontinent its name, irrigation has come recently to the land.
A proscenium from the Ladakhi monastery looks across a valley,
The lamasery of Thiksey, just outside of Leh, rises above the summer's snow melt in the valley below as the last rays of the evening sun spotlight it against shadow-clad mountain folds.
A lone mud brick cell looks onto the Basgo monastery in Ladakh. The destruction brought on by microclimate changes are in turn wrought by man. Not all that seems benevolent is good, when a new irrigation system was laid across this high altitude desert it brought agriculture and tree planting, but also increased moisture and humidity. In a region that once had no rain, there are now catastrophic floods that wash away the mud architecture that had withstood invasions and harsh seasons for millennia.
The Dal lake of Kashmir is a complex biome, home to many who live at its edges and indeed in floating homes and markets. Trees are planted in shallow waters for use as timber, but will eventually reclaim land from the water. This fresh water, unique among urban lakes, is under threat from the every-so-common pollution from habitation, industrial waste and occasional neglect.
The twilight’s haze gives way to the dawn’s early light on the plains of Assam. This is a mythical land shaped by unimaginable tectonic forces, a mighty river, and the full force of the Indian monsoon. It is home to legendary tea varieties, the Indian rhino, stories that have become legend, songs and dances that carry the spirit across generations, and cultural traditions going back millennia. All this may soon be lost to change driven by lucre and bloodlust.
