Nehchal Sandhu
Winter was well underway in 1981 and biannual visits to the few personnel serving in bleak, forbidding and harsh terrain in each of the six isolated northern pockets had been accomplished. The cadence of official demands was fading. The prospect of being discovered for being away from headquarters was remote, since only Morse Code communication existed between us in Ladakh and our principals in Delhi and Chandigarh. So, it was an opportune juncture to explore southern Leh district, which did not educe attention in the normal course of our duties. That was even otherwise a less visited part in the western protuberance of the Changthang plateau, 3,000 feet and more higher than Leh.