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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
THE DAY BEGINS
Up to a million people in Asia could be hit hard by global climate change - from floods, droughts, acute water shortages and hunger, and the larger subcontinent, will be one of the big losers. The Straits Times' Nirmal Ghosh trekked up to Gaumukh, at 14,000 feet, the biggest glacier in the Himalayas and the scource of India's most significant river, the Ganga. And then journeyed to lowlands where the river meets the sea in the world's largest mangroves - the Sunderbans - to gather at first hand a picture of the realities and implications of global warming.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
VIEW OF THE GLACIER
The glacier is seen in the distance to the right of the signboard.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
ONCE UPON A TIME
Mountain guide Suresh Kumar, a Nepali, sits at the spot where the glacier's mouth used to be when he first arrived 14 years ago.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
ONLY IN GAMUKH
The massive ice and rock of Gamukh is seen, as it signifies the fragile birth of a river.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
WONDERS OF NATURE
The Gauri Kund, Gangotri is seen above.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
LODGING IN THE WILD
Nirmal Ghosh as seen here in a camp at Chirbasa.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
PLACE OF WORSHIP
The main temple and holy destination in Gangotri.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
WAYS OF TRANSPORT
Over 2,000 pack donkeys are seen grazing the vegetation of the narrow valley.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
GOING GREEN
Solar panels are seen at a forest rest house in Gangotri.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
CAMPING GROUND
Bhojbasa, a denuded semi-desert, just short of the glacier, is a site of an ashram and a tourist camp.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
DOWN TO THE LOWLANDS
Travelling from 14,000 feet to the lowlands where the river meets the sea in the world's largest mangroves - the Sunderbans. Nirmal Ghosh is seen here with Anil Mistry, who works for the Wildlife Protection Society of India.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
MINGLING WITH THE LOCALS
Nirmal Ghosh meet the locals at Hemnagar in the Sunderbans.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
IN DENIAL OF A SINKING ISLAND?
Nirmal Ghosh speaks to the Ghoramara village headman Ajay Patra (above).
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
LIVING IN IGNORANCE
Shibshaka Mistry said that nobody here knows anything about global warming issues.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
THE WORLD'S LARGEST MANGROVES
The Sunderbans as seen here.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
LEFT STRANDED
The school at Mollakhali has a ramshackle air. Built only a year ago, it was left just half finished when the villagers realised that the embankment that protected them from the river a few metres away, was about to crumble. A second embankment was constructed a few metres inside the original one. But that is also about to give way. Their second line of defence is already up - but behind the school which is stranded today in the space between the crumbling current embankment and the new one. 'Within a year this building will be gone' says Gopal Mondol, a member of the village Panchayat or committee.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
A DIFFERENT VIEW
The Sunderbans is on the frontline of sea level rise.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
DRYING UP
Under the vast sky a freshwater tree withers, choked by salination.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
TRAWLING FOR TIGER PRAWN FRY
The rivers reverse course with the tide at high tide they flow inland as the sea builds up, submerging most of the mangroves, at low tide they flow out again into the sea. Local fishermen spread their nets at low tide to sweep up the fish fry and prawns being swept downriver.
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Asia Feels The Heat: A Straits Times Special on Climate Change - Himalayas & India
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June 22, 2007
NETTING A CATCH
Local fishermen anchor their boats and spread their nets at low tide to sweep up the fish fry and prawns being swept downriver.
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