Climate change is giving us unprecedented heat patterns this year, with large parts of India expecting an early 'summer' with high temperatures lasting longer and warmer nights.
India has a long history of relying on ice, from the Mughals carrying slabs of ice from Kashmir to the plains, to importing ice from New England in the United States during the 19th century.
However, natural ice would not be enough for today's needs, and more worryingly, ice essential for many ecosystems is rapidly melting.
The Himalayas saw a snow drought in the first half of winter, an alarming phenomenon, and according to the BBC, between 2000 and 2023, glaciers outside the major ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica lost around 270 billion tonnes of ice each year on average.
It may be impossible to reverse this trend, but it is possible to slow the pace of warming if there is greater global seriousness about the issue.
