http://www.jonathanmingle.com/intro daily 0.75 2025-02-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1420729528339-U3BGVN6S5KNKSQXFV3PP/IMGP7487.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421886280467-IB0Y8I00RB1Y72M9C9UB/IMGP7474.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421891305558-CR0A1SCHUSW29RHJYNQX/KunzangHearth.jpg Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421933771375-CW7DNGCAJRUAJEWTIPZG/IMGP0211.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421934481049-D3JNTACSB68BTSPS323N/StovepipeEverest.jpg Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421935858930-ME0GMCP5Y5MV2GEXEAQ7/IMGP3214.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421936232290-A5TDHCRE1CKSS6YT25CO/IMGP5485.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421936447069-JKXZH82QN7EFVDTWYHPQ/IMGP5334.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421938637315-IR5DM385GIM90GX9N79F/IMGP3238.JPG Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421961591673-G0WVHRX6YU3IODBC2XC7/DiggingHand.jpg Intro https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1422577753206-K5GDZMUKCP5H55O2A9J6/fireicebook.jpg Intro http://www.jonathanmingle.com/gallery-kumik daily 0.75 2015-08-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421860999036-U6OCS0GY0EZ55FH75XL6/IMGP7485.JPG Kumik - The Old Village The mud brick homes of Kumik, likely the oldest village in Zanskar, cluster tightly on the end of a moraine ridge in the shadow of the mountain called Sultan Largo. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421860999036-U6OCS0GY0EZ55FH75XL6/IMGP7485.JPG Kumik - The Old Village The mud brick homes of Kumik, likely the oldest village in Zanskar, cluster tightly on the end of a moraine ridge in the shadow of the mountain called Sultan Largo. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421860072476-LK2JKCBW37Z41DNJERMN/IMGP7487.JPG Kumik - The Stream The single stream that makes life in Kumik possible. By August this canal has usually run dry. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421881403613-6EEQXO7B84TVFG3DH5XW/IMGP0090.JPG Kumik - The Rain Shadow A rare rain shower falls on Zanskar's central plain, with one of Kumik's Buddhist chorten monuments in the foreground. Zanskar lies in the "rain shadow" of the Great Himalaya, which mostly blocks monsoon summer rains from reaching the consequently arid Tibetan Plateau. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421861571884-RRCQ9P99XQCHAU8GKBXO/IMGP7465.JPG Kumik - The Harvest Each August and September, families and neighbors come together to harvest fodder grasses, wheat, peas and barley. It's hard work that sometimes feels like a party. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421941624768-LEU561RPDI43U9FZZVT3/IMGP7490.JPG Kumik - The Storage Pond This zing, or reservoir, is one of two holding ponds that bank precious meltwater overnight for irrigation use by rotating groups of households during the day. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421859599214-RWFRG6U48YFSHEBQ5KHD/IMGP0077.JPG Kumik - In Summer, Thinking of Winter Villagers harvest fodder grasses to feed their livestock through the long winter to come. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421862514832-SYED35VMASMQXSF9P2QG/IMGP0330.JPG Kumik - Making the Rounds Winter snows can’t deter the grandmothers of Kumik from circumambulating the old village temple, thermoses of salty butter tea in hand. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421858979074-7FUSEQD2YQPNBZ6MJ520/FireandIcehanddigging.jpg Kumik - The Mountain A barley field in mid-harvest, watered by the retreating snow and ice on the mountain above Kumik. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421861186051-8QCUT192EW5DGOPQXCDP/IMGP7476.JPG Kumik - The New Village Eight hundred feet below and a couple miles distant from the old village (in background to the right), a stone-and-cement home rises on the dry, windy plain of Marthang, where the villagers of Kumik are starting over. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421861949230-P3YM4THKYAVIGZD0OD24/IMGP0089.JPG Kumik - The New Canal Kumikpas watch a diesel-powered excavator clear soil from a canal section they once dug by hand. This canal brings river water to the site of the new village in Marthang, but it's frequently blocked by collapsing cliff walls and silt, requiring constant maintenance. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421941976004-CMOSW3ION71GA641AHNJ/IMGP7463.JPG Kumik - Laying Out the New Solar Lhakhang Sonam Dawa holds the end of a measuring tape, helping lay out the dimensions of a future solar-heated community and prayer hall, to be built by Kumikpas’ collective labor. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421862092581-Z6HTWC1KNGWH7W8744OM/IMGP7463.JPG Kumik - Lunch Break In the heart of the new village, Kumikpas rest and eat next to the piles of drying mud bricks that will form the walls of the new solar community hall. Each household contributes ten days of labor to the project. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421858035921-QT1K2GZUT52IC7J7TT3T/image-asset.jpeg Kumik - A New Lifeline With a simple pickaxe, a Kumikpa hacks a small canal into the hard earth of Marthang, the site of the new village, in the shadow of Himalayan glaciers. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421862427666-64PG9YK74PFSWQZHO68A/IMGP0073.JPG Kumik - Facing the Future Tashi Stobdan, the village school headmaster, walks through Kumik’s bone-dry fields toward his future home on the plains of Marthang, the “red place.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/54adbd11e4b0c715bd6eb605/54bfd1fee4b0765281099d57/1439646347615/ Kumik http://www.jonathanmingle.com/gallery-blackcarbon daily 0.75 2015-08-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421189580205-XY6JQTWC3PBJ2ATNZML9/KunzangHearth.jpg Black Carbon - The Traditional Hearth This mud stove is the primary cooking device of this household in the Langtang Valley of Nepal. Villagers harvest wood over a day’s walk away, and carry it home on their backs. Hearth fires for cooking and heating produce 25 percent of global black carbon emissions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421189580205-XY6JQTWC3PBJ2ATNZML9/KunzangHearth.jpg Black Carbon - The Traditional Hearth This mud stove is the primary cooking device of this household in the Langtang Valley of Nepal. Villagers harvest wood over a day’s walk away, and carry it home on their backs. Hearth fires for cooking and heating produce 25 percent of global black carbon emissions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421189766295-K9REMZYFUZA0WCKCUJ4W/Lhotse.Dung.jpg Black Carbon - Fueling Survival - and a Silent Epidemic A woman spreads liquid yak dung to dry on a rock in Nepal's Khumbu Valley, near Mt. Everest. Almost three billion people rely on solid fuels like wood and dung for cooking and heating in crude stoves or open hearths. The smoke produced threatens snow and ice from the Arctic to the Himalaya, and kills four million people around the world each year. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421189773478-7G7LE0HGGCGEKQ1FX87D/RasuwaPoster.jpg Black Carbon - The Killer in the Kitchen An image from a pamphlet distributed by an NGO to raise awareness of the dangers of household air pollution—the biggest health risk factor in South Asia—in Nepal's northern Rasuwa District. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421191113194-IV5EUSDO12E40P89YMHP/NaxiHearth.jpg Black Carbon - To Eat... or to Breathe? This family in rural Yunnan Province gathers daily around an open wood fire in a soot-caked corner of their kitchen. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421866058611-T24ICUJKI1IHAPKZ2SO1/StovepipeEverest.jpg Black Carbon - Soot on the Roof of the World A stovepipe in a yak-haired tent near Mt. Everest base camp sends smoke skyward. Researchers have found concentrations of black carbon in the Everest area equivalent to levels in downtown Los Angeles. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421865392860-Y7B1A050HH9Z000G46WB/YunnanTruck.jpg Black Carbon - The World's Primary Mover Diesel trucks dominate the roads of developing Asia, including this one in China's Yunnan Province. Diesel transport accounts for about 20 percent of global black carbon emissions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421867429492-KVK7AH6S1B2H1YXSWPAF/TrucksTibet.jpg Black Carbon - Where There are Roads... ... there is soot. This road-building crew in central Tibet expands the limits of diesel's empire. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421870477619-V2UW2QW6YBWQ14XS7XSL/Bricks.coal2.jpg Black Carbon - Burning for Building Roughly 9 percent of the world's airborne black carbon comes from industrial sources, such as this brick kiln on the outskirts of Kathmandu, where piles of coal will be burned to fire piles of bricks. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421871103921-Z8KQRMQZHKMWF1KG8IT6/PadumPowerHouse.jpg Black Carbon - The Price of Power This soot-spattered structure houses the diesel generators that provide electricity to Padum, the main town of the Zanskar Valley in northwest India, for a few hours each night. Almost 400 million Indians still lack access to electricity; those who do have power are subject to frequent outages, leading them to rely on expensive, polluting diesel generators as a backup. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421870615142-2S3A0T1XFPQKFIMQO5QT/IMGP6992.JPG Black Carbon - In the Driver's Seat A boy pretends to steer a diesel-powered tractor in the drought-stricken village of Kumik. The extent to which we clear our skies of black carbon will help determine how bright—or dark—his generation's future might be. http://www.jonathanmingle.com/gallery-glaciers daily 0.75 2015-08-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421192141716-GZC080HANFTV51UM64GE/LangtangGlacier.jpg Glaciers - Asia's Fragile Water Towers The glaciers of the Himalaya (the “abode of snow” in Sanskrit) are under assault by the warming effects of greenhouse gases and black carbon particles. Over the northwest Indian Himalaya, for example, temperatures have risen by 1.6 degrees Celsius over the past century—more than twice the global average temperature rise. Here, the Lirung Glacier looms above Nepal’s Langtang Valley, a catchment that is expected to lose 32 percent of its glacial area by 2035. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421192141716-GZC080HANFTV51UM64GE/LangtangGlacier.jpg Glaciers - Asia's Fragile Water Towers The glaciers of the Himalaya (the “abode of snow” in Sanskrit) are under assault by the warming effects of greenhouse gases and black carbon particles. Over the northwest Indian Himalaya, for example, temperatures have risen by 1.6 degrees Celsius over the past century—more than twice the global average temperature rise. Here, the Lirung Glacier looms above Nepal’s Langtang Valley, a catchment that is expected to lose 32 percent of its glacial area by 2035. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421872019153-LDO5FVWR4RDO5RA8HLCI/SultanLargo1.jpg Glaciers - Zanskar's Waning Ice “There are loud indicators that these glaciers are melting,” Shakeel Romshoo, glaciologist at the University of Kashmir, says. He has studied glaciers in Zanskar and other parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir since the mid-1980s. “Out of 365 glaciers in the Zanskar region that were there in 1969, about 6 of these glaciers are not there.” As in, completely gone. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421192037699-Q0WQ3CKC41HDX9JKYBNW/JadeDragon1.jpg Glaciers - Requiem for a Jade Dragon The massif of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is home to the southernmost glaciers of Eurasia. Not long ago there were nineteen glaciers on its flanks; today there are fifteen. The glacier-covered area decreased by almost 27 percent between 1957 and 1999, the largest extent of retreat of any glacial region in China. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421191964702-EGVPHKUHLLIK5SUNZU8T/Rongbuk.jpg Glaciers - The Melting of Mount Everest Since George Mallory’s first attempt to climb the world's tallest mountain in 1921, the Rongbuk glacier at its base has lost more than 330 vertical feet and retreated more than half a mile. In the past fifty years, glaciers on and around Everest have decreased in area by 13 percent, and their termini have retreated by an average of 400 meters. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421192383050-2AUHO8YHQ58P9RG793PA/ImjaLake.jpg Glaciers - A Most Dangerous Lake In 1960, Imja Tso did not exist. Today this lake covers more than one square kilometer at the foot of Island Peak, on the south side of Mt. Everest. Researchers worry about hundreds of such lakes across the Himalaya, formed by accelerating glacier melt, and the prospect of damaging “glacial lake outburst floods”—when the lake’s natural moraine dam bursts, thousands of people downstream in the Khumbu Valley will be at risk. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421872055004-EVL5IK0YMJGWZ48G5T68/PhoChubridge.jpg Glaciers - An Irresistible Force On October 7, 1994, a glacial lake burst its dam and poured into the Pho Chu—the “Father River”—in Bhutan's Punakha Valley. The resulting wall of water, mud and debris killed 23 people, swept away houses, and tore loose this bridge from its moorings. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421192256779-WMMWUGK7LOQ6L8B8444K/SultanLargoGlaciers.jpg Glaciers - The Doomed Glaciers of Kumik The small glaciers on the summit of Sultan Largo, above the village of Kumik, are a fraying quilt of ice and snow. “In Zanskar there are many villages which are depending on glaciers, like Kumik,” says Stenzin Thinles, the head of Gonpapa, perhaps Zanskar’s oldest and original household. “Maybe after some years the glaciers are totally finished, and they are getting big water problems." https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421871946465-YFZZ9YVRV3JHF8X2SS1X/SultanLargoTashi.jpg Glaciers - After the Water Towers Fall “Without water, there is no life,” the people of Kumik often point out. With the loss of their life-sustaining snow and ice, they are facing an uncertain future - but they are facing it together. http://www.jonathanmingle.com/home daily 1.0 2025-02-24 http://www.jonathanmingle.com/buyfireice daily 0.75 2015-08-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1422581616787-HNTORKW9M9GZU53KOQNK/fireicebook.jpg Buy http://www.jonathanmingle.com/about daily 0.75 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/467aff41-247a-4fef-b05f-95953cad2dd0/Mingle+Author+Photo+3.jpg About - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/1421962348535-JFZO8KR5TDC6KERBVA9R/image-asset.png About Jonathan Mingle and Urgain Dorjay in Padum, Zanskar, India. (Photo credit: Gregg Smith) http://www.jonathanmingle.com/selected-writing daily 0.75 2019-03-14 http://www.jonathanmingle.com/selectedwriting daily 0.75 2026-04-02 http://www.jonathanmingle.com/books daily 0.75 2026-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/cde26f47-3e88-427f-a767-e09cb5f09921/Gaslight+Cover.jpg New Page - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54734d12e4b0f56660519c3d/4907ea2f-7ab2-419d-8b64-9532a013c496/Mingle.FireandIce.Cover.jpg New Page - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.