This illustrated talk will be based on James Crowden’s book The Frozen River about the Himalayan mountains in Ladakh, a Tibetan Buddhist part of North India.  James spent a year out there in 1976/77 and over-wintered in the Zangskar Valley cut off from the outside world for seven months. He also made two trips up and down the Zangskar Gorge on the frozen Zangskar river as well as exploring some of the mountains.

Forty years later, James returned to Zangskar in 2017 and 2018 and was able to observe significant changes in the size of the glaciers, the reduced snow cover as well as changes in melt water irrigation which has had a marked effect on agriculture and village life.

James Crowden is a prolific author of over a dozen books (Ciderland, Literary Somerset, In Time of Flood, Dorset Coast.) His literary work is underpinned by his experiences in North Dorset and South Somerset as a shepherd, sheep shearer, cider maker and forester. His own experiences in the army took him to Cyprus, Eastern Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and India.

In 1999 James was made the Common Ground Apple Day Poet Laureate and subsequently wrote a libretto for a major new environmental opera called The Silver Messenger which was performed in Christchurch Priory in July 2001. Recently James has worked on several recording projects for Year of the Artist and Somerset Now, as well as working on Foot & Mouth poetry with Devon photographer Chris Chapman. James’s poetry has often been featured on BBC Radio 4 and television, as well as Literature Festivals at Dartington, Wells, Ludlow and Oxford.

The Juniper Trust is a charity based in Cumbria that funds schools in Nepal particularly a school James Crowden visited in Ichar, a very remote part of Zangskar.