The fight for water from the Himalayas is getting harder and harder

BDaniel and his friend Matt still made it to the second base camp on the eight-thousander Dhaulagiri. But then the two Australians from Perth had to turn around. “It started to snow heavily, rock and snow avalanches crashed into the valley, nothing went up anymore,” they tell the FAZ. The Nepalese Sherpas had not expected such weather in the Himalayas at the beginning of May either; 36 mules and one of the porters lost their lives on the mountain.

“Climate change is bringing with it enormous changes in the weather, it’s dry when it should rain, it pours in the dry season,” reports Yogesh Gauchan Thakali, at 29 years of age Nepal’s youngest parliamentarian. The “flash-floods”, unexpected torrents, tore away houses and villages, but in the rainy season there is drought. “The advantage is that we can grow apples and potatoes in higher and higher areas. Disadvantages, however, are the unpredictability, the disasters and the problems with the water supply,” says the young politician in an interview.