Sheet 04 · the institute · Pokhara · 28.21°N 83.99°E
Founded the year the river turned.संस्थान
Himnadi was chartered in 2069 B.S. — 2012 A.D., the year the Seti rose without rain and 72 people did not see it coming. Our charter is single: no one below the mountain should be surprised again.
The charter
We keep the public register of the Gandaki basin’s ice. We measure what stands above the city — four hundred and forty-seven glaciers in the survey window, most of them without a name — and we publish what we measure.
The institute was chartered after the flood. On 5 May 2012 the Seti rose without rain below Annapurna IV, and seventy-two people did not see it coming. Our work is the opposite of surprise: the register of the ice, the danger register of the lakes it leaves behind, and the record of that morning, kept in the open.
We are surveyors, not mourners. Where the record is measured, we print it plainly. Where it is modelled, we say so, in red.
Notice · on the record
Himnadi is a fictional institute. The glaciers are real. The numbers are real. The flood was real.
Every measurement on these sheets is drawn from the public record, cited below. Where we have modelled, we have said so, in red.
Method & data
The glacier outlines on the register are drawn from the Randolph Glacier Inventory 6.0, an open scientific record whose outlines date from around the 2000s. The terrain under the basin instrument is the Copernicus GLO-30 elevation model, quantized to a compact binary grid so the relief can travel light.
The decadal snowline on the basin instrument is a provisional model, and it is labelled as such, in red, wherever it appears. The danger register of glacial lakes reproduces the ICIMOD/UNDP 2020 inventory’s classifications exactly as published; nothing on that sheet is modelled. The record of 5 May 2012 is kept on its own sheet.
- RGI Consortium (2017) — Randolph Glacier Inventory 6.0 · doi:10.7265/N5-RGI-60 · CC-BY-4.0
- Copernicus GLO-30 DEM — European Space Agency
- ICIMOD/UNDP (2020) — Inventory of glacial lakes, Koshi–Gandaki–Karnali basins
- NASA Earth Observatory — orbital record of 5 May 2012 · public domain
- IC — New China Digital Seismograph Network · Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory / USGS · DOI 10.7914/SN/IC — the seismic record of 5 May 2012, via EarthScope (IRIS DMC) open FDSN services
Instruments
The basin sheet draws the survey window as an Imhof-style relief — computed shading, hypsometric tone, and contour work rendered in the browser, directly from the elevation grid.
A single time instrument scrubs the basin through the decades. Its historical positions await the measured inventory; until it lands, the modelled portion is marked.
Every reading on these sheets is set in Himnadi Figures, the institute’s own numerals — ten digits and the survey marks, drawn for the ledger.
Colophon
Designed and built by Kinetico · Pokhara · 28.2096°N 83.9856°E
Sound synthesized in the browser · the 2012 sonification follows the seismic record