"Kolahoi is our everything," said Ashraf Mohammed Ganai, 24, a lean Kashmiri man who makes his living guiding scientific expeditions to Kolahoi. "Without her, we are lost."

Because of climate change, these glaciers, and the people who rely on them, may now need some divine intervention.

(Read National Geographic magazine's "The Big Melt.")

Surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of the world's tallest mountain range, the Kashmir region, disputed over by India and Pakistan, is home to thousands of glaciers. Until recently scientists had claimed they would be gone in just a few decades, mostly based on data from the United Nation’s (UN) 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

However, in 2009 scientists discovered major flaws with this prediction. A report published in November