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Haider Zaidi cultivates wheat, potato or any other create to their places to provide for their large nearest and dearest. The guy brings as a result of their ancestors, and especially their parent and you may fellow villagers, who grafted an excellent glacier significantly more than the village 150 years back. It’s liquid of that glacier one feeds the new areas away from the newest nearly five hundred households, every reliant on the farming, from inside the Manawar Gaon mainly based 2,228 metres significantly more than sea-level close Skardu, when you look at the Pakistan’s province off Gilgit Baltistan.

The glacier ‘marriages’ in Pakistan’s highest Himalayas

Along with eight,one hundred thousand glaciers, Gilgit Baltistan is called new land out of glaciers. But where particular glaciers have not formed obviously, a historical grafting method is made use of. The fresh routine is shrouded in method and you can routine. A suitable lay need to basic be found – a cavern otherwise strong pit from inside the a mountain – oriented at the least cuatro,one hundred thousand so you can 5,100 meters over sea-level, where temperature are less than zero year round. Snowfall and avalanches should be preferred, without head connection with sunrays.

Male and female glaciers

Based on folklore, glaciers are also given female and male identities. Men glaciers are gray in colour, that have a lot of debris, meanwhile women glaciers try shiny light otherwise blue. So it male-females improvement is normal from the mountainous components. Instance, from inside the Bhutan the fresh new softer Mo Chhu (female river) suits brand new turbulent Pho Chhu (men river) in the good confluence close certainly their most sacred dzhongs inside Punakha.

Liaquat Ali Baltee, good documentary originator, and resident of Skardu, told you, “The individuals off Gligit Baltistan accept that glaciers live entities. This is why a variety of male and female freeze is seriously requisite. The male glacier – entitled ‘po gang’ in your town – emits absolutely nothing drinking water and you can actions reduced, when you find yourself an excellent ‘ladies glacier’ – otherwise ‘mo gang’ – try an expanding glacier providing you with from an abundance of liquid.”

Grafting yet another glacier needs an aspect every one of a great “male” and you can “female” glacier weigh everything 35 kilogrammes. Villagers very carefully pack these types of pieces in some coal and barley existe to keep them safe from much warmer temperature and place them into a beneficial chorong (an excellent conical basket created from willow branches). Then they transportation it towards the appointed put and you can defense them with the mix of dirt, ash and you may charcoal and you may personal this site having heavy stones.

Neighbors holding frost pieces carved of glaciers for the web site from this new grafting [image of the: Liaquat Ali] At this juncture, villagers along with manage special prayers and you can sacrifices, constantly creature slaughter that’s conventional for the Muslim festivals. So it whole process is called good “relationship out-of glaciers”. Immediately following ten or twelve age, such tasks are supposed to delivery a glacier.

While this ritual is commonly discussed, a lot of people simply understand of it from the oral traditions and never have took part in they. Shamsheer Ali, which lives in Kharmang into the Baltistan is just one of the pair to possess actually drawn region into the something regarding a dozen many years in the past as part of a project backed by brand new Agha Khan Rural service program.

Shamsheer said, “All the downline went along to Arandu town near Shigar town inside Baltistan. I got a couple of items of glaciers and put them towards our backs, then i wandered for a few months constantly finally i reached the newest pre-decided web site to possess grafting. With this travel i don’t put those individuals parts on to the ground. We kept shifting it from 1 neck to some other.”

He in addition to told united states he went to your website 5 years before and you will observed that glacier got spread-over an enormous town. “Our company is providing plenty of h2o consistently immediately after grafting the glacier, [a flow] that was abnormal before. Today we are cultivating wheat, millet, barley and you may make frequently,” Shamsheer told you.