Mega solar park could put Spiti on thin ice

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Editor's note: “My yaks are grazing in Dhar Dumbachen,” said Rinchen Tobge, between sips of tea as he took a break from painting his two-room homestay on a November afternoon. He was preparing for the tourists expected to throng Spiti in the winter, hoping to catch a glimpse of a snow leopard. “Dhar” means ridgeline in the local language. Dhar Dumbachen—at an elevation of 5,100 metres above sea level in the state of Himachal Pradesh—is a ridge with vast pastures around it. Residents of nearby Tashigang, Gete, Kibber and Chicham villages graze their livestock there in summer. By January, Tobge’s two yaks were back home in Kibber and by the last week of March, he was ready to start ploughing his small patch of land with their help. “We may have to start farming in a day or two. It has become hot early this year. It snows later than earlier and gets hot sooner,” he complained, when we spoke over the phone at the end of March. As idyllic a setting as any. But that’s just on the surface. The Himachal …