Milam’s glory is melting away

Once a thriving trading post, the Himalayan village now stares at receding glaciers and shifting weather, threatening its nascent tourism industry.

Along the Zanskar trek | Photo Credit: Shikha Tripathi 

In the arc of his flashlight, Mohan Singh Nikhurpa peers over precious black-and-white photographs of Milam in the Himalayas, the Indo-Tibetan border village that was under crossfire in India’s 1962 conflict with China. The war changed lives significantly for the valley’s people, the Bhutias who were known as a prosperous, high-altitude trading community, forcing many to relocate to lower altitudes in search of livelihoods. The valley eventually opened up to tourism, a beacon of hope for the people there. It is, however, seeing churn, with changing weather patterns.

Nikhurpa oversees the Tribal Heritage Museum in Munsyari, the last town before the Milam trail, in the far-east of Kumaon, Uttarakhand. He is the keeper of archives, memories of the past, and unanswered questions about the future. “See how far the tongue of ice reached out!,” he says, pointing to sepia-toned photographs. “It is not even a fraction of this anymore,” he adds.

Up in the Milam valley, homestay-owner Bhagat Nikhurpa confirms this: the snout of the Milam glacier has now receded by eight kilometres upstream of the village, a trek of at least a couple of hours from the valley’s last village.

As per a study by the India Water Portal, the 20th century was a period of glacier retreat in nearly all alpine regions of the world with accelerated melting of glacial ice and snow over the past two decades. Between 1954 and 2006, the Milam glacier retreated by 25 metres a year on an average.

The Milam glacier trek route has seen a significant change in weather over the last few years. In his research on changing temperature and rainfall patterns of Uttarakhand, professor and research fellow Ashutoh Mishra wrote that in 2012, the average annual temperature in Pithoragarh, the district where Milam lies, was 0.58°C higher than it was in 1911.

Not only has this dampened the enthusiasm of trekkers, but it has also affected the growth of potatoes and herbs in the region. Milam is not the only place that may once again become victim to migration that had birthed entire ghost villages in Uttarakhand. Thinles Dorjay, a guide who has worked with some of Ladakh’s biggest operators before branching off on his own, recently started a clothing store in the Leh main market to offset dipping family income.

Dorjay, who depended on a lot of popular treks such as the winter favourite Chadar, laments the diminishing window when the Zanskar river freezes into a bed of ice for people to walk on. “Until eight years ago the river would remain frozen from mid-January to March end, but now it starts melting within a month. The temperatures would go down to -40. Today, people are bathing in the river! It’s as warm as 28°C in Leh in the summer, and the window for the trek has drastically reduced,” he says.

The Zanskar icefall | Photo Credit: Shikha Tripathi 

As much as global warming is to be blamed, much of the triggers are man-made, starting with the road coming up along the Zanskar canyon. The construction, documented extensively by author Mateusz Waligórawith and photographer Michał Dzikowski as part of the “Before It’s Gone” project, reflects the stark and irrevocable changes. In a story the duo wrote for The Guardian, they talk about the importance of documenting such changes so we remember them and also learn from them. Clearly, this is not the case in most places in the Himalayas: unabated construction continiues in highly fragile ecological environments.

The road runs parallel to the river, and is bound to eventually change the iconic trek beyond recognition. Perhaps it will create access and opportunities, but the Zanskar river expedition will also meet the same fate.

Another highly popular route in the mountains is the Adi Kailash region in Uttarakhand, which sees the combined footfall of trekkers and pilgrims. Narendra and Janki Singh run a homestay on this route in the nondescript village of Napalchu, where they have had a successful run for nearly five years. What had been a full-time business has now dwindled. “The roads got blocked early this season; we weren’t expecting rain so early on. But this is increasingly the pattern, and we are getting more and more cancellations,” says Janki, who is setting up a small eatery in Dharchula, the closest big town, to supplement their income and make up for the losses. They are unlikely to let their son join the business now, and instead, intend to urge him to look for a steady job in a city.

In Himachal Pradesh, some of the most popular trails that were once deemed “easy” have undergone a grade change in the difficulty level, and have been defined as “moderately tough”. The beautiful Hampta Pass which was once considered a reasonably doable monsoon trek, is now a no-goer in the season. En route to the summit of the Friendship Peak popular as a “beginner-friendly mountain”, climbers are reporting bigger crevasses on its rapidly changing routes.

The Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh | Photo Credit: Shikha Tripathi 

Sonu Kaushal, who started organising treks near his hometown Manali more than a decade ago, has seen visible changes in climate patterns and their evident effect on trails: “In the last five years, the monsoon has become very intense, and we recently removed Hampta Pass from our calendar for the first time. Even on the Kedar Kantha trail, snow is melting at a much faster rate than before, and our window for the trek has come down by at least 15 days. Another popular trek, Vyas Kund, has also been hit as the melting glacier’s increased water has made river crossing on the trail challenging.”

Vaibhav Kala, founder of Aquaterra Adventures conducts rafting trips on some of the biggest rivers running across the Himalayas, observes: “It is about time we moved a lot of high trips out of June, which now sees increasing unpredictability. Operators need to keep track of changes in weather patterns. We need to use meteorological services extensively now to inform clients. Choosing the right camping spot is crucial, especially after unfortunate incidents such as the recent one in Uttarakhand near Sahastratal where 22 trekkers got stranded and five died while returning.”

In 2017, the release of dam construction material down the Siang river in Arunachal Pradesh made Aquaterra move a rafting expedition to the Subansari river. Sadly, a hydroelectric project is currently under construction on the Subansari as well, threatening the survival of the river, and livelihoods.

Shikha Tripathi is a writer footloose in the Indian Himalaya, specialising in stories woven around nature, sustainable living, changing ecology, and the outdoors.