NEW DELHI—A group of seven engineers in India is working to solve a problem which people only in the high, inaccessible Himalayan region of Ladakh encountered during the pandemic—how to wash your hands when every single drop of water freezes and there’s an extreme scarcity of water.
More generally the people of Ladakh faced the problem of how to manage life when everyone is at home due to the lockdown and there’s no electric power supply.
Global Himalayan Expedition (GHE), a social enterprise run by seven engineers that leverages tourism as a force for development, has set up 150 solar water heaters in 45 villages and solar electricity in 13 villages of Ladakh in the past six months after India reopened following the first wave of the pandemic.
“We are a group of engineers. And the idea was to look at an area where we can do adventure and at the same time do an impact on the community,” Paras Loomba, the founder of the GHE, told The Epoch Times over the phone. 90 percent of the villages they reached were inaccessible until 2019, he said, and people had to trek for days to reach them.
Global Himalayan Expedition’s work during the last ten years includes providing solar electricity in 105 villages in Ladakh including eight seclusive Buddhist monasteries whose customs have witnessed many long years of historical change but never had electric power until the GHE reached their door.
“The two things when it comes to COVID: in Ladakh in the winters, especially the area which is a cold desert, it’s very, very harsh, it’s minus 30 degrees. It even goes to minus 40 sometimes. People in the rural areas do not have heating systems as such. So you can’t expect them to take bath every day, it’s probably once in a week, once in a month,” Paras Loomba, the founder of the GHE, told The Epoch Times over the phone.
“The second thing is in the area of the Leh district, which is basically the dry area, there’s also not enough water in the winters, the only water you have [is] frozen. The only option is the spring water or even the hand pumps. If they are not deep enough, they won’t get the water out,” he said, adding people also need to conserve water for the summers.
GHE was already providing solar electricity in some of the most remote regions of the country and that’s when they thought of using the same technology to provide other “simple solutions.”
The region of Ladakh, which was before 2019 a province in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, became the federally governed territory called Union Territory (UT) in India after India made a constitutional amendment.
The trans-Himalayan region where villages exist between 9000 feet above sea level to 14,500 feet, according to Loomba has enjoyed the least development.
“Now, of course, the schemes are coming and the government is trying to do their best once it became a UT a few years back. But still, most of the rural areas, especially the area of Zanskar, which is sandwiched between Leh and Kargil has hardly [seen] any development,” said Loomba.
The government of the UT of Ladakh signed a memo of understanding with Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL) unit Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL), a state-owned enterprise, on June 5 to set up a solar mini-grid for Ladakh.
Loomba points at the news to highlight the importance of the work “the group of engineers” has done in the last ten years.
How Did it Start?
Loomba started Global Himalayan Expedition in 2013 as an enterprise that took travelers from around the globe to such remote places and in the process, this company also electrified the same villages.
“A group of 40 people will come from all over the globe, we’ll use their money as part of the expedition, and part of the money will be used to electrify a remote village. That’s how we started ten years back,” said Loomba adding in the course of years in addition to the tourists many international developmental organizations also started to work with GHE.
The team of engineers doesn’t have any tourism background and they rely on simple solutions to solve pertinent problems.
“The idea was if we can design a solution, which is very simple to install by the travelers and also easy to maintain by the villagers, and it should at least transform or transcend them from just using kerosene oil, or small CFLs [compact fluorescent lights] to LED lighting and good television with communication,” said Loomba.
During the pandemic when lockdowns were enforced around the world, travelers stopped coming to Ladakh, and GHE started to get CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) financing to improve upon the healthcare systems and other critical infrastructures like solar water heaters in Ladakh.
Loomba said the infrastructure they are setting up during the pandemic times would be helpful for tourism once the pandemic stops.
“So any village where there are people who want to set up homestays or guest houses, they should [be able to] use this water heater later on as part of the tourism facilities for the guests so that the guests feel safe and secure, that this area also has good hot water, they wash your hands and stuff like that,” said Loomba explaining how setting up water heaters and solar electricity in such remote villages will go a long way in creating sustainable income for the people.
The water heaters are not completely donated, and the families are required to contribute towards their installation.
“Let’s say it costs X amount of rupees, let’s say $200 or 14,000 rupees, they would want to contribute 5000 rupees, for every water heater, that means they value the product,” said Loomba.
“So we will have money for transport, for the person who installs it. So that becomes a very collaborative model … Even the companies are able to put in funds for many people because it doesn’t cost much.”
People are actively using solar water heaters, earlier they were using firewood to boil water for a bath, for hot water for tea, or for cooking, according to Loomba.
Traveling to Farthest Villages
The Global Himalayan Expedition has electrified many Indian villages along the disputed border with China in Ladakh—taking solar technology to where conventional grids couldn’t reach. These villages are of strategic significance for India.
“In February this year, we electrified a village on the LAC [Line of Actual Control or the de facto border with China]. It’s called Dungti. It’s a Tibetan refugee village,” said Loomba adding that Dungti consists of 54 families and a monastery.
People in this village migrated to the region during the 1962 war between India and China and lived without electric power till this year. It took the team that consisted of two Ladakhi woman engineers three days in minus 25-degree temperature to reach the village.
“We went back in April and we set up 15 water heaters for 28 families. So there are two families sharing one water heater.”
Loomba said his father and most of his team members’ fathers served in the Indian army and as children, they traveled to some of these remotest regions where the army was stationed, and they developed the “tenacity” to do something for these regions.
The GHE team starts with identifying the villages that need help and then mobilizes the community to support them with logistics.
“Most of the villages are not on Google Maps. I will say 70-80 percent. Even the 90 percent of the villages which are there are tagged wrong because there’s no road. How would you know the exact location?” said Loomba. They start with talking with the councilors of the area and check what the village needs, he said.
These councilors know the exact ground situation, they connect the team with the local guides. There are good roads in the capital city Leh but in remote areas, there are no roads and the community supports the team with logistics like horses and other support needed to transport the material to such high altitude, low-oxygen, remote villages.
Loomba said this way his team has been able to reach even the remotest health care centers with solar electricity and solar water heaters on India’s de-facto border with China in Ladakh during the pandemic.
