One harsh wintry morning in December 1971, Ghulam Hussain left his home in Pharnu village in Pakistan along with his sheep to graze them across the hills in Thang village of Turtuk, which was then under Pakistan control. Hussain was caught in the crossfire of a fierce battle that broke out between the Indian and Pakistani armies on December 8, …
Holding a pair of small binoculars in his wrinkled hand, 75-year-old Ahmed Shah has been watching tourists make a beeline to his village for more than a month now. From Pakistan to India Between the midnight of December 14 and December 16, 1971, the Indian Army captured four villages across several hundred square kilometers in the Shyok Valley that were …
On one side of the dusty off-road from Turtuk, in Ladakh’s Nubra valley, to the village of Thang, just 2.5km from the mercurial Line of Control, a large rock presents a stark warning: “You are under enemy observation.” Other rocks on the route are inscribed with the words of Baltistan’s beloved poet Qurban Ali, who lived through the 19th and …
