Nestled along the banks of the mighty Alaknanda river lies the ancient settlement of Maletha. For generations, the village suffered a cruel geographic paradox: the river flowed directly beneath the village in a deep, roaring gorge, but between the water and the fertile fields rose an impenetrable ridge of solid Himalayan granite.
The village women climbed steep cliffs daily with heavy brass pots. Crops withered in the summer sun while millions of litres of glacier runoff rushed past, untouched, hundreds of feet below.
In the early 17th century, one man decided that the mountain had dictated his people's fate for long enough. His name was Madho Singh Bhandari, the chief commander of King Mahipat Shah of Srinagar Garhwal.
Having defended the kingdom against northern Tibetan invasions, Madho Singh returned to his ancestral home with his iron chisel and hammer. When he announced his plan to bore an irrigation tunnel through the mountain ridge, the village elders shook their heads.
For nearly a decade, alongside his loyal workers, Madho Singh hammered into the dark interior of the ridge. With no dynamite or pneumatic drills, they used fire, cold water thermal fracturing, and hand chisels to chip away granite centimetre by centimetre.
After immense perseverance, on a crisp Himalayan morning, the chisel broke through the final rock face. A rush of cold spring water from the Chandrabhaga tributary surged through the mountain tunnel, spilling out across the parched terraces of Maletha.
That tunnel, known to this day as the Maletha ki Gool, still irrigates the emerald green fields of Maletha four hundred years later.