1990 Photo Contest, Nature, 2nd prize
Photographer

Olivier Föllmi

01 January, 1989

Motup (12) and his sister Diskit (9) are experts at testing the ice with their sticks. Along with a group of adults, the two children are making an expedition from their village of Zanskar to Ladakh where they are enrolled in school. For eight months of the year Zanskar, in the heart of the Himalayas, is cut off from the outside world. Only when temperatures drop to 30 degrees below Celsius is a path created: a frozen river at the bottom of a canyon, which if all goes well, enables the villagers to reach Ladakh, the nearest town, in about 12 days.

About the photographer

Olivier Föllmi

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