A solution had to be found for the oxygen supply to a newly planned hospital in the inhospitable area of the Zanskar mountain range in the Himalayas. Inmatec Gase Technologie GmbH & Co. KG – based in Herrsching am Ammersee – developed, built and transported this solution there to provide the patients in the distant shores of India with a reliable supply of medical oxygen at all times from the ambient air. However, this task was much more challenging than it sounds. Everything started when the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare began planning a new district hospital in Kargil. The city is located in a hard-to-access high valley of the Zanskar range in the Himalayan mountains in the western part of the Ladakh region in the Indian state of Jammu, a part of Kashmir that is governed by India. The area is regularly cut off from the rest of the country. Kargil has the reputation of being the second coldest inhabited area in the world after Siberia, with winter temperatures of -48 °C or colder. In addition to this, the area is 2,676 metres above sea level on average and experiences the annual fluctuations of an arctic/desert climate, in which the temperature can rise to up to +35 °C in the summer. In winter, it is normal to see heavy snow fall with up to five metres of snow. There are no cleared roads for supply or transport.
