CHANG LA PASS

The Changla Pass or Chang La Pass (el. 5,425 m (17,799 ft)) is a high mountain pass in India.The Changla Pass is on the route to Pangong Lake from Leh. It is named after the nomadic tribes of the region Changpa. La in Changla indicates pass. A temple dedicated to Changla Baba has been created by grateful travellers, invoking the spirit of the pass. The small town of Tangste is the nearest settlement. The Changla Pass is the main gateway for the Changthang Plateau situated in the Himalayas. The nomadic tribes of the region are collectively known as the Changpa or Chang-pa. The Chang La is the third highest motorable vehikel pass in the world.
A REPOSITORY OF SEEDS ON CLIFF TOP OF HIMALAYAS
 Nestled 17, 500m high on a cliff top in the Himalayas, Chang-La has the sub zero temperatures and low humidity necessary to suspend seed life for future generations.  It is a site carefully chosen. It is far from rising seas and tectonic plate movement but at around 75km from Leh aiport, it is close enough to human civilisation today to deposit the country’s agricultural heritage with ease.  Chang-La, opened last December, currently holds 5,000 seeds from the Ministry of Defence, prioritised for qualities such yield or resistance to temperature, pests or humidity. But its total capacity is ten times that and,
 The facility in India aims to rival that at Svalbard in Norway, which can hold up to 3 million seed varieties, by opening up its vaults to the international community.
 Crop seeds, developed slowly and carefully over thousands of years, are not only the source of sustenance for humankind but the best repository of genetic material scientists can use to help develop food resistant to the vagaries of climate change.
THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT
 The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a secure seedbank located on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen near the town of Longyearbyen in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago. The facility was established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern. The seed vault holds duplicate samples, or "spare" copies, of seeds held in genebanks worldwide. The seed vault will provide insurance against the loss of seeds in genebanks, as well as a refuge for seeds in the case of large scale regional or global crises. The island of Spitsbergen is about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) from the North Pole. The seed vault is  managed under terms spelled out in a tripartite agreement between the Norwegian government, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (also known as NordGen and previously named the Nordic Gene Bank, a cooperative effort of the Nordic countries under the Nordic Council of Ministers). : Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, and India.
Construction of the seed vault, which cost approximately 45 million Norwegian Kroner (9 million USD), was funded entirely by the Government of Norway. Storage of seeds in the seed vault is free of charge. Operational costs will be paid by Norway and the Global Crop Diversity Trust.The primary funding of the Trust came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, United Kingdom, Norway, Australia, Switzerland, and Sweden, though funding has been received from a wide variety of sources including four developing countries