In April 2023, mountaineer Anurag Maloo was just about 150 metres from the Annapurna Summit. As the weather worsened, he decided to turn back but during further descent from Camp 3 on April 17, he mistakenly clipped into the wrong fixed rope and disappeared into a crevasse: a trap with no way out. Falling roughly 70 metres into the glacier’s frozen gut at close to 6,000 metres, where the temperature hovered around -40°C, with no food, water or communication, Anurag waited for three days with only his GoPro for company, recording thoughts from inside the glacier.

When Polish rescuers and Nepali Sherpas finally pulled him out on the fourth day and took him to the nearby hospital in Pokhara, doctors declared him clinically dead. It took what doctors would later document as one of the longest successful CPRs in recorded medical history — nearly four hours — to bring him back. His case has since been published in multiple medical journals, including the Air Medical Journal and ScienceDirect. “In the hospital, I realised that this life doesn’t just belong to me but is meant for something larger than myself,” says Anurag, who has spent over 15 years working across start-ups, venture capital ecosystems, and social impact.

But this is not a story of how he put his life together but one that talks about how he turned his near-death experience to bring life to a cause that has been abjectly ignored: glacier loss and how it is a threat to the future of our water security. “I was fortunate to have those 72 hours. But probably these glaciers, may not even have 72 years,” says Anurag.

A foundation built on ice

For the mountaineer, the time at the hospital was not only for recuperation but also reflection. The Voice of Glaciers Foundation (TVGF), founded by him in 2025, was probably conceived in spirit inside that glacier.

But why the focus on glaciers? For millions across South Asia, glaciers are not remote landscapes or postcard scenery. They are upstream water towers that regulate river flows, sustain agriculture, power hydropower systems, and underpin livelihoods far beyond the mountains.

The numbers though, starkly called out the urgency for this movement. Himalayan glaciers have lost over 40% of their ice volume since 2000. Across the Hindu Kush Himalaya, ice-loss rates have doubled since the same year, and half the world’s glaciers could be gone by the end of the century.

At TVGF, Anurag has set three objectives, each addressing a different dimension of the same failure: glaciers are disappearing fastest while action remains slowest. “The first objective is to bring glaciers into public consciousness. I want to go beyond scientific abstractions and glaciers as backdrop imagery and want to embed it into public attention through glacier festivals, public data, installations and awareness campaigns; to make it relevant to those whose drinking water, irrigation and power supply depends on glaciers,” says Anurag who was named Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum in 2025.

The second is to build digital public infrastructure for glacier risk, and the third is to mobilise capital. Anurag wants to help build multi hazard warning systems, glacier monitoring tools, digital twins of glacier systems, and a glacier risk intelligence platform as well. As for raising funds, Anurag says that he is working towards bringing more CSR and philanthropic capital to support the first two objectives. “I want glacier preservation and upstream mountain ecosystems to stand alongside forests, oceans, biodiversity, and air quality as a mainstream sustainability priority, to be an integral part of corporate sustainability commitments and philanthropy spends,” he says, adding that the team is also planning a National open platform that translates satellite and AI data into actionable community intelligence.

The next step

How does one make glaciers matter to people who have not seen one? How does one make this problem relevant to a population who cannot even visualise a glacier, let alone understand that the danger is imminent? During his recovery, when standing felt impossible, Anurag kept himself going by focussing only on the “next immediate step.” He did not ask why this had happened. He asked what he would do next, as survivor’s responsibility.

TVGF is still in its early stages. Its core proposition is already clear: glaciers are not a distant mountain problem. They are a civilisational one. The job is to shift the cultural and political discourse around glacier loss, to make the issue impossible to ignore, and to demonstrate that the glacier crisis is not only a humanitarian emergency but a space where breakthrough technology can and must play a role.

And sometimes, it takes a man to be pulled from a crevasse to remind the rest of us what is melting in plain sight.