Author: Myra MacDonaldPublisher:
ISBN: 9788129112866
Category : Siachen Conflict, 1984-
Languages : en
Pages : 242
Book Description
Siachen. The world s highest battlefield. An obscure, unwinable war fought in the mountains far beyond the reach of ordinary men. A parable of India and Pakistan. At the end of 2003, foreign correspondent Myra MacDonald set out to uncover the secrets of this war, on a journey which began in the monkey-infested military headquarters in Delhi, led through the villages of superstitious Indian foot soldiers to the villas of retired generals in Islamabad, and to the war zone itself on both the Indian and Pakistani sides. Heights of Madness is the first account of the Siachen war to be told from both the Indian and the Pakistani points of view. But it is also about the journey itself, of a lone foreign woman travelling through India and Pakistan, meeting larger-than-life characters the Buddhist hillman, the Sikh hero, the Pathan commander, the Hindu jawan and stumbling into improbable settings, fighting off altitude sickness in a yak tent, huddling around a bukhari stove in a makeshift officers mess, suffering from sunburn on the world s highest road. And perhaps most of all, it is about the mountains. For the Siachen war is fought over a land so beautiful that you come to believe, as do many of the soldiers who serve there, that this is indeed the home of the gods.
