World's 'Highest' Village running Dry As Warming Hits Himalayas

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Yet despite its coveted status, life is harsh for the 130 residents of Komik, a quaint collection of whitewashed mud-and-stone houses located in the desolate Spiti Valley.The region is a cold trans-Himalayan desert cut off from the rest of India for six months of the year when snowfall blocks mountain passes. Phone and internet connectivity is almost non-existent. Schools and clinics are a tough trek away. But Spiti's some 12,000 inhabitants, who eke out a living farming green peas and barley, have a much bigger concern: their main sources of water - streams, rivers, ponds - are drying up. "We are used to being in a remote place. We have our traditional ways of living," said farmer Nawang Phunchok, 32, as he sat tying bundles of a prickly desert bush together to insulate the local monastery's roof."But these days the water is not coming like it used to. The seasons are changing. We see there is less water than before." There is little doubt India is facing a water crisis. Decades of over-extraction of ground water, wasteful and inefficient irrigation practices, pollution of surface water like lakes and rivers, and erratic weather patterns attributed to climate change, have left many parts of the country thirsty.

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