beige sweater, sensible lace-up shoes. But, unlike comic-book superheroes, he’s 74 years old. He invites me into his beautiful family home in the small village of Skarra, near Leh, where, in a bid to peddle the ‘regular guy’ image, he presents his charming wife and daughter and we drink the peculiar local butter-chai and snack on almonds and apricots.
Chewang Norphel is no ordinary villager. He makes glaciers.
Norphel takes a barren, high-altitude desert and turns it into a field of ice that supplies perfectly timed irrigation juice to some of the world’s poorest farmers. So far, he has built ten artificial glaciers since he retired as a government engineer in 1995, and their waters sustain some 10,000 people. It’s hard to describe what an extraordinary feat this is. In one of the most climate-change-ravaged regions, Norphel, a one-man geoengineer, has effectively conjured up water, doubling agriculture yields as assuredly as if he’d swooped in wearing a cape and stopped global warming in its tracks.
In a display of energy and enthusiasm that is exhausting to witness, Norphel skips across the boulder-strewn landscape above Tashi’s village. He wants to show me his latest artificial glacier design, but I’m finding it tricky simply to breathe the thin air, 4,000 metres up. He carries a small backpack: tonight he will sleep in a tent 1,000 metres higher up, at temperatures that dip to -10°C, so as to continue his work in the morning. ‘When it is very cold and very difficult work, I have to remain focused. All I can think about is making the most successful glacier,’ he says.
Engineer, hydrologist, glaciologist, backyard enthusiast, Norphel has created his own field of expertise using scientific principles and training but the tools of an uneducated peasant. ‘What he has achieved in such circumstances, in remote parts of this mountainous desert, is remarkable,’ says Pankaj Chandon, coordinator of the WWF’s Indian High Altitude Wetlands Conservation Programme, based in Leh, who has followed Norphel’s progress over the past decade. ‘It is testament to his sheer force of character. But also, he has come up with a unique, innovative idea that provides water when it is needed. It is a fantastic adaptation technology for the climate changes that we are experiencing in this region.’
Norphel has always been focused. As a child, born into a farming family in Leh, he would take every opportunity while out minding the herd to scratch times tables and algebraic equations into the dirt with a stick. ‘I begged my father to let me go to school, and he agreed as long as I also kept up my farming duties. So I would rise at 4 a.m. and take the cows and goats for grazing before school. After school, I would rush home to help in the fields.’
In the 1940s, when Norphel was growing up, there was just one school in Leh, which taught in Urdu (not Ladakhi), and only up to primary standard. As the youngest of three brothers, Norphel would ordinarily have been sent to live in a Buddhist monastery, in part to reduce the family costs as his father would not have been able to afford secondary school. So, at 10 years old, Norphel simply ran away, travelling more than 400 kilometres to go to school in Srinagar, Kashmir. The only poor boy at his school, he paid for his education by cooking and cleaning for his teachers.
Graduating in science at the college in Srinagar, Norphel knew two things: he loved mathematics and science, and he wanted to help the farmers he’d seen struggling so hard during his early childhood. One of his heroes at this time was his father’s cousin, who had been to London and returned to Leh as Ladakh’s first engineer, built the town’s airport and the Leh to Srinigar road.
There was no university in the state at that time, so Norphel travelled south to Lucknow for a civil engineering degree, this time being taught in Hindi. He loved the rigour of the subject and the practical application of physics and material science. ‘You can really make a difference with engineering. You can solve people’s problems quickly and in a way that they can see,’ he says. ‘Simple projects, such as a well-placed bridge of good design, can make things so very much easier for people who have to otherwise walk a day or more out of their way.’
For Norphel, the whole point of his training has been towards using his knowledge in the service of his fellow Ladakhis. Engineering is a vocation for him in the same way that medicine might be to a doctor. Like Mahabir, his determination and effectiveness is transforming lives.
As soon as he qualified, Norphel returned to Leh to join his father’s cousin in the government of Ladakh’s rural development department as a civil engineer. It was an exciting time to be working, but also extremely challenging. There was hardly a road or bridge when he started in 1960, and everything had to be built by hand. ‘We had no funds even for pickaxes and shovels – people were using animal horns to dig in some places – but roads were the most urgent requirement,’ he says. ‘People had to travel everywhere by pony, and where the tracks were very poor, all the ponies would have to be unloaded so that the animals could cross the broken part, and then reloaded after. Journeys that took weeks can now be made in hours.’
Over the next thirty-five years, the enthusiastic, raven-haired engineer became a familiar sight in Ladakh’s villages. Unlike other government experts on secondment from elsewhere in India, Norphel became known for his genuine engagement in the villagers’ problems, and they grew to trust him. More than 90% of the population were subsistence farmers, living and working in tightly knit communities. There was no money around – everything was done through trade and cooperation – and when Norphel needed labour for his projects, people willingly came forward. ‘There is scarcely a village in Ladakh where I have not made a road, a culvert, a bridge, a school building, an irrigation system, or a zing [small water-storage tank fed by glacial meltwater],’ he says.
He approached each problem scientifically, experimenting by altering the variables until he arrived at a satisfactory solution – and always remembering that his designs had to be sustainable, using locally available materials. For example, he built a number of canals where instead of using an expensive cement lining that cracked during winter, he allowed weeds to grow and thicken, their roots naturally sealing the canal lining.
By the time of his retirement in 1995, priorities were shifting. Road-building was still important, but Ladakhis were becoming aware of a far more serious problem – one that threatened their livelihoods. ‘Every village I visited it would be the same thing: water scarcity. Glaciers were vanishing and streams were disappearing,’ Norphel says. ‘People would ask me to bring them water. Their irrigation systems were drying up and their harvests were failing. The government was starting to bring in grain rations.’ Norphel was determined to do something. ‘Water is the most precious commodity here. People are fighting each other for it: in the irrigation season, even brother and sister or father and son are fighting over water. It is against our tradition and our Buddhist teachings, but people are desperate. Peace depends on water.’
Inspiration came within a hundred metres of his house, one bitingly cold winter morning. ‘I saw water gushing from a pipe and was thinking what a shame it is that so much abundant water is wasted during wintertime – the taps are left open to stop the water freezing in the pipes and bursting them,’ he says. ‘Then I noticed that on its route to the stream, the water crossed a small wooded field, where it was collecting in pools. Where the trees provided shade, it was freezing into ice patches. By early March, the ice patches melted.’
Norphel realised that if he could somehow copy this on a much larger scale, he would have a way of storing up this winter water in an artificial glacier that would melt at just the right time for crop sowing and irrigation. It was a beautifully simple concept but achieving it would be fraught with difficulties. ‘People laughed when I first presented the idea and asked for funds,’ he says. ‘Officials and villagers were sceptical, “What crazy man are you? How can anyone make a glacier?” I was told.’ But Norphel soldiered on. He held meetings with village elders, and explained the concept. Gradually, his relentless enthusiasm caught on.
He had no equipment; no altimeter or GPS reader, not even a bulldozer. Perhaps just as challenging was the societal
