India Artists carve an icy “minicolosseum” with a café and sauna in Chilling, India

Indian In the Himalayas, artists use chainsaws to carve ice blocks raised from the adjacent Zanskar River, on ice at this time of year.

The goal is to start a tradition that would compare to the annual international ice festival in Harbin, northeast China, according to AFP news agency.

At least the name of the place is relevant: the sculpture is done next to a village called Chilling in the Ladakh region of northern India. The region is the least populated in India, but its recent history is volatile: India, Pakistan and China have argued over who it belongs to.

Now the Kangsing collective, which implements snow and ice sculptures, has created an icy “minicolosseum” in Chilling, a café and a sauna with an open space next to it. According to AFP, the temperature in the sauna rises to 60 degrees.

“Wonderful and invigorating. You don’t feel the cold at all, ”said a local police officer who jumped into the abyss Tundup Gyaltsan To AFP.

Ice Colosseum is not, at least for the time being, particularly close to the Roman Colosseum: there is little more height than the average man.

However, the authors’ dream is to make Chilling still an annual landmark equal to the Jukkasjärvi Ice Hotel in Sweden, AFP says.

More adventurous tourists are already interested in the place. The installation is done at the starting point of the Chadar trek. A seven-day hike along the frozen Zanskar River is favored by foreign adventure tourists, but due to the pandemic, tourists have not had a thing for the “frozen desert” for two years.

For centuries, traveling along frozen Zanskar has been the only way to travel in the area during the winter months.

The installation is placed in a place where the sunlight is not just enough to melt it. In this way, the current ice colosseum and other ice sculptures that may be waiting for the future will remain in place for as long as possible. According to AFP, the temperature stays between -17 and -20 degrees throughout the day this season.

Chilling is located at 3.35 kilometers above sea level.