Best Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival Tour Destinations: Where Frozen Water Becomes Architecture for Six Weeks Every Winter
Browse more guides: India travel | Asia destinations Best Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival Tour Destinations: Where Frozen Water Becomes Architecture for Six Weeks Every Winter A sculptor at Harbin's annual ice festival once told me that he and his team had spent eleven days carving an ice castle approximately four stories tall. They'd worked overnight shifts because daytime sun, even at -25°C, slightly softened the surface. He showed me a single ice block they'd cut from the Songhua River - about two meters across, seventy centimeters thick, weighing close to a ton. The river had frozen sufficiently solid that the cutting crews drove trucks directly onto the ice. By April, he said, none of this would exist. The castle would melt; the river would flow again; everything they'd built would be water by spring. He smiled. "That's part of why we make it." This guide is for travelers who want to find what most travelers don't realize: that the world'...