Chickens run around in the street in the village of Marpha. That seems natural enough.
The tiny place in the shade of the mighty Annapurna Range in Nepal is very much a rural society.
But the way that the chickens behave is new and worrying, says Kamal Adhicari who has grown up in this area.
“It used to be too cold here for chickens to run around in the autumn. They would stay indoors. Now, temperatures have risen.”
The winters have always been white with lots of snow.
“When I was a child we would get a lot of snow, sometimes more than 10 feet. This year we had no snow at all,” says Adhicari.
The glaciers feed almost all of the major rivers of Asia. More than one billion people are dependent on them. Right now they are melting fast, threatening lower regions in both Nepal and neighbouring countries with floods, just like both the population and the authorities are deeply concerned increased catastrophes.
