Beijing - A sample of the Triglav glacier that has been shipped to Beijing in an awareness-raising campaign has reached its final destination in the Olympic Village, where it will now gradually turn to glacier water to highlight the perilous state of glaciers worldwide.

The melting of the glacier ice will be at the core of a special event at the Olympic village in Zhangjiakou that the Slovenian Olympic Committee will organise on 4 February, the opening day of the Olympic Games, the Olympic Committee said.

The ice sample will be put in a special showcase in which the temperature will be just above freezing. The meltwater will slowly drip into a special crystal bowl, which will then be shipped back to Slovenia as a display at the Slovenian Mountaineering Museum.

Given that the Triglav glacier is rapidly shrinking, the water may be the only thing left of the glacier in a few years' time.

The arrival in Beijing marks the end of a journey by a hybrid-electric vehicle from Ljubljana through Europe and Russia all the way to Irkutsk in Russia's far east.

There, the glacier was put on an air plane and flown into Beijing because this was the only way to get it to the Olympic village. And even though the cool box was not connected to electricity, the glacier ice remained frozen.