Innovator Sonam Wangchuk Built A Solar Powered Heated Tent For Galwan Valley Soldiers

Sonam Wangchuk or dearly known as 'Phunsukh Wangdu' shared his new project - solar powered heated tents

Sonam Wangchuk shows proof of the difference in degrees in and outside (Facebook/Sonam Wangchuk)

New Delhi: Sonam Wangchuk has built a solar-powered portable military heating tent for the soldiers posted in Ladakh. A tent can accommodate up to 10 soldiers at a time who usually have to stay in rough terrains is freezing temperatures. He shared images of him building the tent and in the captions he noted the temperature differences. 

In Ladakh Siachen area, soldiers have to wear heavy clothes and shoes to avoid the cold. Along with this, they have to burn kerosene and wood as the temperature of these areas could go to minus thirty degrees. In such a situation, the invention of Sonam Wangchuk will be very useful for the soldiers of the country. His work was praised by Netizens. Anand Mahindra, the chairman of Mahindra Group, said,” Sonam, you’re the MAN! I salute you. Your work is energizing, even this late in the evening…”

Last year, Sonam Wangchuk posted a video on YouTube sharing a strategic plan to fight back China by boycotting everything Chinese to take revenge for rising tensions between India and China which led to removing Chinese products and banning apps like TikTok. He had suggested people to resort to "wallet power" in order to take revenge from the neighbouring country China.

Born in 1966, Wangchuk is an engineer, innovator and education reformist who founded Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in 1988. He is known for environmentally conscious projects like the Ice Stupa Project which creates artificial glaciers by collecting water in winters that helped local farmers in irrigation in springtime. Water is vertically frozen in the form of huge ice towers or cones of 30 to 50m height that look very similar to the local sacred mud structures called Stupa or Chorten and help in conserving water.

In 2009, with the movie 3 Idiots Sonam Wangchuk came into the spotlight, he was played Phunsukh Wangdu by Aamir Khan. His accolades include, Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2018, Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2017, UNESCO Chair Earthen Architecture, by CRATerre France in 2014.