Sonam Wangchuk is an engineer turned educationist who recently bagged the prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise for his engineering prowess. He was born  and brought up in a tiny village of five households about 70 kms from Leh. 

Till the age of nine, he learned to read and write from his mother. The early years of his life was spent in learning in what he calls “a holistic, harmonious way”. He played in the fields, sowed seeds, worked with animals, jumped in the river and climbed trees. Finally, when he joined school at the age of nine, his skills were so well developed that he got promoted twice a year.

Later, while he was pursuing a course in mechanical engineering, he decided to teach children so that he could earn some money. That is when he realized the deplorable state of education in the schools. According to the statistics of the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives (HIAL), an alternative university for mountain development that Wangchuk is setting up, 95 per cent students failed their board exams in 1996. Over the next two decades, this number has steadily decreased to 25 per cent this year. The drop in the failure rate can be attributed to the alternative learning practices and other innovative measures that Wangchuk helped develop.

Soon, he found his inner urge to help students who failed and give them a new chance. He set up the  Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in Phey, around 12 km from Leh. The school has 70- 100 students, all of who failed their tenth boards, but living there is an experience in itself. The students run the school themselves like a country with an elected government. Here they don't have to read chapters from a text book, but they actually do things like farming, tending animals, making food products and trying to solve real life problems that they face in these harsh climatic conditions.

While trying to solve one such grave problem of water scarcity in the region, Wangchuk came up with the idea of ‘Ice Stupas’. Earlier too, some people had tried to solve this problem, like a very senior engineer who had come up with the idea of artificial horizontal ice fields, but he didn't succeed as the ice melted prematurely.

To address this problem, Wangchuk tried the simple method of building vertical ice towers, so that very little part is exposed to the sun and the ice will melt very slowly. The idea is to freeze the water in winter and use it in late spring.

Wangchuk deviced a method in which a pipe brought water from the upstream to the downstream. When that happens, the built-up of pressure in the pipe is used to run a fountain that sprays water in the air. The -20 degree temperatures of the Ladakhi winter cools and freezes as it falls, slowly and naturally takes the shape of a giant conical structure. The conical shape of the ice tower ensures minimal exposure to the sun, thus preserving the water for use in spring.

This is such a simple, but genius invention that earned him the Rolex Award for Enterprise. He intends to use the  Rs 1 crore prize money as seed fund for his dream project – the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives. The institute will welcome youth from different Himalayan countries to come together to work to create a 'sustainable ecosystem of constant innovation'. The youth will research the issues faced by mountain people – in education, culture and environment and will device ways to solve these issues through out-of-the-box ideas and practical application of knowledge.

Wangchuk believes in ‘doer’ universities which brings out the creative, analytical and problem solving aspects of the students. He is setting up a model of it in Ladakh. This 50 year old man is a role model for all of us as he inspires us to think out of the box, to invent and innovate and transform problems into marvelous inventions.