The heat is on!

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Could the first signs of global warming be creeping in on the Himalayas?

As the countdown to Copenhagen begins, the real story of global warming is not about ice sheets collapsing or polar bears dying. It's closer home. The Himalayas, often referred to as the Third Pole because of the hundreds of glaciers that empty into its rivers, are witnessing a rise in local temperatures that is unprecedented. And the impacts are subtle. My mission is to travel up to almost 17,000 feet, to document these changes in people's lives. And to tell my story I have chosen a little known corner of the mountains - Spiti Valley tucked away in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh. This cold desert ecosystem is one of India's most desolate and yet breathtaking landscapes.

We drive along narrow winding roads - Spiti Valley is engulfed in snow. It's unprecedented for this time of the year. When we reach, the first snow machines are clearing up the roads. Climate scientists predict that the Himalayas will be the most vulnerable to climate change. Temperature rise is expected to cause glaciers to melt and weather patterns to become unpredictable.

Our first stop is at Komic- a village at the highest altitude in Spiti. Here because of the untimely snowfall the women of are hard at work - trying to save their green pea crop. I meet 45-year-old Gatuk, as she plucks at the pea crop in the fields in front of this picture postcard beautiful village. The main crop at this altitude is green pea and barley - but freak weather conditions have upset the agricultural calendar. The number of houses on an average is fifty in each village. It's a small, close-knit community and everyone chips in to work on each others' fields.

For two years now it has been snowing in September. Majority of the people we interview state that the weather patterns are now changing. They don't know about global warming but they all admit that their traditional knowledge about the weather is no longer relevant. I meet another farmer Rabzar Zimba who is also feeling the heat. His entire barley crop is now reduced to fodder to be fed to the cattle. Across Spiti Valley - 70% of the crops have been destroyed from untimely snowfall. As Zimba cuts the coarse grass with his sickle against the backdrop of the snow laden Himalayas, I wonder - could the first signs of Planet Earth's worst crisis be setting foot in this part of the world?

And the victims are not just individual farmers. It's the entire apple industry. At a lower altitude close to Manali - I meet an apple trader Mohanlal Thakur. He has taken to running a resort as the profits from his apple orchard have gone down. Due to rising temperatures the apple crop has declined by 40-60% in the last five years. Ideally, apple trees require temperatures below 7 degrees C for at least 1,500 hours during the growing season to yield a good crop.

Studies, in fact, show that in the last ten years average winter temperatures in the mountains have gone up by 3 C. With rising temperatures, the apple industry has now moved up in altitude and the best apples now come from Spiti. So one man's loss has become another man's gain. In Spiti I meet Punchuk Rai who admits that when his father planted the first apple trees almost five decades ago nothing would grow, as it was too cold.

But now, as the weather has become warmer apple is now an important cash crop. The only problem - at this height there is an acute water shortage. And with accelerated glacial melt will apples still grow in Spiti a decade from now? The future of the apple industry hangs in balance.

So are the perils of global warming unavoidable? And is there no hope for people living at high altitudes? I meet Ishita Khanna, a social entrepreneur who could be instrumental in helping people to cope with climate change. She's founded a local NGO Ecosphere with a simple mission - to help local people live off their scarce natural resources in a sustainable way. Ishita's focus has been on developing livelihood options that use local resources. While the cash crops like apple or green peas are water intensive, one plant that is locally found is sea-buckthorn. It grows wild along the mountainsides. And over the years Ishita has organized hundreds of women across the valley to harvest this wonder berry.

Sea-buckthorn has great medicinal as well as ecological value. It is locally found and has properties to bind the soil thus preventing flooding and soil erosion. The end product - is juices and jams, all harvested responsibly in Spiti - earning the local women here a livelihood. Another idea that Ecosphere has been working on is how to provide sources of clean energy to the people living across this cold desert. And one ingenious method is the construction of houses using 'solar passive technology'. Spiti being a Trans-Himalayan cold desert, witnesses 6-month long winters where the temperatures fall to as low as -30 degrees Centigrade. Moreover, due to its high altitude and extreme winter climate trees cannot grow or survive. Therefore, during the winter people here burn coal, dung to cook and warm their houses with firewood, which is brought from lower altitudes in truckloads and sold by the government.

But now across Spiti, Ecosphere is supporting the construction of houses using solar energy. The technology very simply is this - an energy-efficient building is south facing, integrates passive solar architecture to gain heat either through an attached greenhouse, double glazing windows or trombe walls that retain heat inside the building. The techniques are based on local materials (dung, straw, mud brick) to improve access to reliable, sustainable and affordable energy.

Across Spiti hundreds of such homes are being built with support from Ishita's organisation, using the solar technology - so far, on an average per household, fuel wood consumption has reduced by 50% in homes using the energy from the sun, temperatures of rooms are always above 10°C and the inner air is smokeless. And through the construction of these houses nearly 3.5 tons of CO2 emissions per household is saved annually, which contributes to offsetting emissions and thus mitigating global warming. There are hundreds of such projects that Ecosphere is initiating to make sure that people of Spiti have access to clean energy and their lifestyle is sustainable

As I get ready to leave this distant land - I leave with a sense of guilt. The battle to save Planet Earth maybe a complex one, but the people of Spiti have shown the way. They maybe the least responsible for global warming but they are now the victims. And across the world as communities struggle to come to terms with floods and drought and melting ice caps - this is the simple message to take home - the answers perhaps lie in changing our own ways of life.