Environmental photographer and journalist Arati Kumar Rao travels throughout South Asia throughout the year to capture the subcontinent's changing landscapes.
Through photographs and words, she evokes the growing threat that climate change poses to the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Ladakh region, who face an uncertain future beneath the melting glaciers of the Himalayas.
Kumar Rao is one of this year's climate pioneers on the BBC 100 Women list.
The night of August 5, 2010 is still fresh in the memory of the people of the Ladakh region, in northern India, when everyone had the feeling that a cloud had exploded over the region around the capital Leh.
A year's worth of rain fell on the cold desert in just two apocalyptic hours.
Massive waves of mud engulfed everything in its path.
The panicked people were buried half a step under the thick brown-gray mass.
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Several hundred people were never found after that fateful night.
The Ladakh region, the northernmost plateau of India, is located at more than 3.000 meters above sea level.
The Great Himalayan range protects the region from the annual monsoons on which much of the rest of India depends.
Until recently, Ladakh basked in the sun for 300 days a year, while barely ten centimeters of rain would fall on the endless rocky and mountainous landscape.
Floods were not known.
The catastrophic flood of 2010 was followed by a quick succession of new floods, in 2012, 2015 and, most recently, in 2018.
Something that hasn't happened in seven decades has happened four times in a row in less than 10 years.
Such unusual weather conditions are the result of climate change, according to experts.
A decade and a half ago, there was a regular rhythm in the territory of Ladakh, which provided the villagers with a stable supply of water.
The winter snow melted into the streams, just as the melted water from the glaciers trickled down and supplied the farmers with water in the spring.
However, due to climate change, the average winter temperature in Ladakh has increased by one degree Celsius in the last 40 years.
Snowfall has become increasingly unpredictable, and glaciers have retreated higher towards the mountain tops or disappeared altogether.
I visited Ladakh for the first time in 2018.
I came back in 2019, and again in the spring of this year - in the meantime I couldn't come because of the corona virus pandemic.
The difference was astounding.
The snow is now melting faster, meaning villagers are left with little or no water until spring.
The glaciers are now so high in the mountains that they melt later in the year.
Spring in Ladakh, once rich and fertile, was dry and uneventful this year.
The lack of water has led to a reduction in grazing land, making it unsustainable to keep large herds of Pashmina goats.
Changpa hounds give up their traditional jobs and migrate to other parts of India or to Leh in search of non-pastoral jobs.
Farmers, unable to find water for barley and apricots, leave the area en masse.
Despite the devastation caused by climate change, there is hope for this isolated region.
During my second visit to Ladakh in March 2019, I met engineer Sonam Wangchuk.
He told me that while driving through the valleys in 2013, he noticed a large embankment of unmelted ice under the bridge, protected from the sun.
The sight of that little ice tower gave him an idea.
"High school math tells us that a cup is the simplest solution," he told me, smiling.
Wangchuk wanted to help the villagers freeze water in the winter so they could save it for use in the spring.
Freezing her in the form of a coupe would maximize the amount of ice per square meter of sun-exposed surface and extend the time it takes to melt.
The engineer assembled a team of locals and began experimenting, looking for the best way to make a cup of ice.
Eventually he found the right formula.
When they piped water from a mountain stream into the valley, they diverted the water to flow up a vertical pipe with a precision sprinkler at the end.
The water went up the pipe and came out through the sprinkler in the form of a finely dispersed water mist.
In nighttime temperatures of -30 degrees Celsius, that jet froze as it exited the pipe.
Gradually, as more and more water came out in the form of a fine spray and turned into ice, the edifice began to look more and more like a cup.
Now called ice stupas, after Buddhist meditation sites, they have gained great popularity across Ladakh.
These buildings, some of which are more than 30 meters high, supply water to a community that has seen climate change destroy its natural sources.
At the same time, they provide a surprising source of entertainment - fierce competitions are held every year to win the title of the highest stupa.
But neither Wangchuk nor his friends who built the stupa are aware of the injustice of this whole situation.
The people of Ladakh are paying the price for the carbon emissions that are happening elsewhere.
"It is not enough that we persistently come up with technical innovations, persistently adapt and persistently solve problems," Wangchuk tells me.
"I want to use the ice columns as much as I can to draw the world's attention to the need for behavior change, as I want to provide us with a source of water."
As a photographer who has traveled the endless expanses of South Asia, I know that Ladakh is not alone in this struggle.
For the first time in history, India and its neighboring countries, China and Pakistan, are facing a common enemy - climate change.
They have the potential to destroy river basins and threaten the most populated area in the world.
It is high time we unite to resist this threat to our survival.
Also watch this video:
Produced by Rebecca Thorne, BBC 100 Women.
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