This large-scale, multi-sensory installation is a journey to Ladakh—a high-altitude mountain desert in the Himalayas, Earth’s largest freshwater reserve outside the polar regions. Handcrafted sheets made with local soil, sand, clay, indigenous plants and glacial melt become tactile, fragrant archives of Ladakh’s vast terrain and varied vegetation. A medley of elemental sounds of the land with people’s voices plays simultaneously, pressing on the fragility of the eco-cultural configurations of the Himalayas.

The installation mirrors Ladakh’s altitudinal gradients, where human life at 3,000–4,500m above sea level is sustained by ice towers at 5,000-7,000m, now retreating at alarming rates. The layered soundscape amplifies the tensions shaping this landscape: glacial streams merge with personal memories, ritual chants dissolve into humming military jets, and ancestral knowledge faces looming climate anxieties.

Topographies of the Third Pole emerges from long-term interdisciplinary research with farmers, traditional medicine practitioners, scientists and religious scholars. The gridded arrangement silently echoes the postcard-like photographic frames through which the Himalayas are often read. By inviting touch, smell and listening, the work attempts to shift from passive looking—presenting not a curated spectacle, but a palpable Himalayan picture prompting a visceral connection to this vital mountain system in rapid transition.