![]() ![]() We have constructed dams and redirected the course of Himalayan rivers, clogging vital arteries with concrete.īut more than any of these intrusive developments, it is our contributions to climate change that will probably have the greatest consequences for the Himalayan region. ![]() We have built villages, towns and cities where grasslands and forests once stood. We have cut paths and roads through narrow gorges and across high passes. We have reshaped the contours of ridges with terraced fields that alter the angle of a slope. Nevertheless, in my lifetime, human beings have done more to change the face of the Himalaya than several millennia of orogeny – the natural process of mountain building and erosion. The Himalaya were here before our anthropoid ancestors evolved into the frenetic creatures we have become, and ultimately this geological protrusion of the earth’s crust will outlast our species. ![]() They are not measured in megabytes or gigahertz. In the rapid-fire world we have created for ourselves, boasting instantaneous communication and our ability to gratify virtually any desire with a keystroke or the swipe of an index finger, there is a tendency to imagine that everything around us is accelerating at the same pace. The 366 days that have made up 2020 matter very little when compared to the prolonged changes occurring over thousands of centuries. A single year in the vast timeline of Himalayan history is all but insignificant. ![]()
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