Blood in the water | The Spectator Australia

Tibet is a glass of water balanced at the top of the world. 

It occupies the crumple zone leftover from a head-on collision between India and Eurasia, where the ground was forced thousands of feet upwards into an impassable landscape of mountains and glaciers. The sheer height of the Himalayas changed global weather cycles forever, starting the famous Indian monsoons while drying central Asia out into a panorama of deserts. 

In its grasp collects the third largest mass of water-ice after Antarctica and the Arctic. Whether you call it the ‘water tower’ or ‘third pole’, these glaciers feed ten of the world’s largest rivers, sustaining nearly half of the population in Southeast Asia through fishing and agriculture.

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