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March 18, 2004
Snow; water of lifeThe British are somehow naturally obsessed with the weather, perhaps because it is generally so bad in the UK, but at least it is something we share with the folk of the Kullu valley. There is always too little snow or too much, never just the right amount. But then from the agricultural and tourism point of view, the weather is far more pressing a concern than for a City merchant banker worried about getting his 30 quid haircut wet on the run to Holborn tube station.
In snow terms here, there is actually never enough. People talk about snowfall of twenty or more years ago starting in early December, ending in March and occasionally reaching 8 feet deep as it did in 1978. But climate change is a problem world-wide these days, and in the years I have come to Manali the weather has definitely changed, usually too much or not enough rain and at the wrong time.
The day we arrived back from Thailand in January, a good snowfall had started, and kept going without break for a full two and a half days solid, finally laying down 120 cm of the white stuff in Manali, and 2 metres in the Solang valley. The problem is, that was the only snowfall this year. Normally it will snow at least two or three times in Manali, and usually in winter when it is raining in town, it is snowing "on the top" - a few hundred metres up on the surrounding hills. By the beginning of April all of the surrounding hills and mountains should still be completely white, and the gradual melting as the summer comes on will raise the river levels quickly, providing water to the Kullu valley and feeding the rivers of India's plains.
But with only one snowfall and almost no rain to speak of, the hills are already looking threadbare, and this is going to be a problem in a month or twos time. A glance toward the ridge of the Rohtang pass shows more bare rock than snow - and that should still have a thick covering. The ridge toward Dharamsala and the peaks behind Jagatsukh are also showing large rocky patches, something that usually doesn't happen until early May, still 6 weeks away.
Old Manali and the surrounding villages in any case suffer perpetual water problems. Old Manali's water is from a spring behind the village which is fed into storage tanks and then distributed via a chaotic network of pipes to the village houses and beyond. Inadequate storage and distribution mean much water is lost at the time it is needed, and those toward the ends of the pipe system as we are, spend the summer with water often only one or two days a week, which in a village full of summer tourists hell bent on a morning shower causes huge problems. It doesn't help that some selfish wankers try to boost the pressure to their guest house by opening the pipes in the middle and jamming in grass and leaves to block the supply to those down stream. Finding the blockage is a tedious task, more so knowing you will be doing it again in two days time. Trying to get the local water authorities to do anything about it is like trying to get anything out of officialdom in India; useless unless you are related to an MP or senior IAS officer.
The snow that did come has also melted too quickly, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather we've been having for the past 6 weeks. Days are cloudless and hot in the sun - warm enough that we have stopped using the Bukari at nights a full month earlier than last year - and this is also causing potential problems with the orchards. The lack of sitting snow has left the ground very dry looking, and already blossoms have come and gone (a month early) on many of the apricot and cherry trees, with the apple blooms looking set to appear in a day or two. The biggest danger now would be a cold snap or sharp frost during flowering - very possible as it is so early - or when the fruit begin to form, which would kill many of the delicate blooms. This happened last year, and the ground was littered with failed fruit, although the local farmers were amazed to find that in the end it somehow turned out to be one of the best harvests in years (they were less happy when the huge availability of apples pushed down prices to the lowest in years).
According to environmentalists, such weather changes are only the beginning of far worse problems. Already Himalayan glaciers are almost an extinct species, most having dwindled to nothing in a few short years. Plains India relies to a great extent on Himalayan meltwater for rivers and irrigation, and water is becoming more scarce for longer periods even as a rising population puts ever greater pressure on an already dwindling supply - and gives rise to other problems.
Delhi suffers severely from severe water supply problems in the summer months. Domestic pipes often run dry and large parts of the population have to be supplied from tankers, earlier and earlier each year. The digging of deeper wells and the growing amount of water consumed by Industry is lowering the city's water table by a number of feet each year, and that is taking it to levels where increasing amounts of toxins from the land are being introduced into the supply. A similar problem - on a far more dangerous scale - occurred in Bangladesh, where a UN project to bring water to villages by boring thousands of tube wells, lowered the water table to the point the water was coming up with ultimately lethal concentrations of arsenic. The problem was entirely unforeseen by the project, and although subsequent attempts were made to correct the problem, millions of Bangladeshi villagers still only have access to water that they must use, but which will ultimately kill or seriously incapacitate them.
Water is life. Another modern cliché is that this centuries wars will be fought over that most necessary of resources. Disputes between Indian states are common and long running, the most famous being the never ending dispute between Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh over sharing the waters of the Cauvery river. Successive high court rulings on the case have been disputed or ignored. In the last few decades, there have been 21 international disputes over water involving military action - in 18 of which Israel was involved - and that number is sure to increase rapidly as a deteriorating climate and population pressures push supplies to the very limits.
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ApologiaThere must come a point in the life of every blog when the blogger posts an apology for not posting - and, well this is it. I know there are a few strange souls who apparently enjoy my distorted view of life, and that is what occasionally makes me feel a little guilty. I think the tail end of winter - too warm in the evening for the bukari to be lit, yet still too cold for full mental function to take effect - has been responsible, but it could well just be the onset of daytimes warm enough to go and sit in the orchards with a book; or of course I am just plain lazy. I recall one reader of the blog saying to me 6 months ago to try and post at least once a week; a modest aim and I'm going to try to stick to it.
Oddly the word for lazy in Kullvi is "sexily", which we found uncomfortably odd early on when we didn't know any words in the local language and people would say "I am feeling very sexily today".
Apologies also to anyone who has been have trouble with slow loading pages of late. My useless hosting provider for this site didn't bother thinking ahead and is now rushing to catch up with the hardware needed for serving sites at an acceptable speed. The process should (they claim) be complete in two to three weeks - sure.
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Coal woesCoal for the Bukari supplied in Manali usually comes in the form of charcoal, rather than the fossilised stuff dug out of the ground. The coal merchants are wily buggers; a drop in temperature will send coal prices skyward, and choosing a decent bag is like trying to find a ripe avocado in Sainsbury's - finding the Holy Grail would be marginally easier. The coal seems to come in 3 main forms; far to big, far too small, and dust - with a small number of reasonably sized pieces. The bags are art forms, the pieces distributed in the bags to look like the bag is full of choice stuff, but a quick rummage reveals the truth. The end of the bag usually leaves you with 5 kilos or so of unburnable powder, and lungs choked with dust from sifting out the usable pieces. Toward the end of the winter, the bags get even worse and price goes up further, as the bags are more underweight. However, the depths to which they will stoop to get more for less were revealed with a sorting of the last bag of winter coal; several pieces of plain wood - and half a dozen crushed and mangled large sized batteries of the kind used in ghetto blasters.
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