Rathong Glacier, West Sikkim, India // Breathing heavily in the thin Himalayan air, Shresth Tayal pauses for a moment on the steep mountain track and gestures with his walking stick towards the Rathong glacier, nestling like a pearl between two jagged peaks on the skyline.
Then, with a sweep of his stick, he points down beneath him to a wide, silver scar running along the brown-green floor of the Rathong Valley in India’s north-eastern state of Sikkim.
“That’s where the glacier used to be,” he said, tracing the length of the pale, rubbly corridor with his cane. “Last year it was in a much better state.”
Up close, the glacier reveals further signs of deterioration. The sound of running water burbles up from hollows in its core and at its snout (the technical name for a glacier’s lowest point) a lake has formed.
For Mr Tayal, this is all evidence of one thing: that climate change is causing the Himalayan glaciers – the largest store of fresh water in the world after the polar ice caps – to disappear.
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