Water is an essential resource for life, yet in the shadow of K2, the world’s second-highest peak, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan should be awash with water. What happens when the guardian of glaciers faces shortages? Mismanagement is the cause. Gilgit-Baltistan possesses over 13,000 glaciers, feeding rivers that slake the thirst of 200 million downstream. Yet in Skardu and Gilgit, the twin hearts of this high-altitude paradise, taps run dry in summer and freeze in winter when mercury plunges to minus 25°C. What was once a natural bounty has become a cruel irony: a region parched by its own abundance, as melting ice unleashes floods one season and droughts the next. As climate change accelerates, the impacts ripple from contaminated wells in remote hamlets to political skirmishes over dwindling streams. The water crisis in Gilgit-Baltistan precisely reflects South Asia’s water insecurity when viewed through a global lens.

Skardu, a dusty bazaar town at 2,230 metres, exemplifies the paradox. Home to 30,000 people, it relies on the Sadpara Dam, a Soviet-era relic built in the 1990s with American aid, for its water and power. Designed to hold 93,310 acre-feet, the reservoir has lost nearly a third of its capacity to silt from recurrent floods and glacial outbursts. In summer 2025, as tourists flocked to the nearby Deosai Plains, residents queued for hours at communal pumps, rationing trickles from rusted pipes. “We open the taps and nothing comes,” laments a Sadpara resident, echoing complaints since floods halved the dam’s output.

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Gilgit, 150 km north, fares little better. Its daily demand of 1.2 million gallons dwarfs a storage capacity of just 500,000, leaving two-thirds of households underserved. Winter deepens the misery: pipes burst in the freeze, and hauling water from........

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