‘I went looking for my lost yak and I saw them building bunkers’

“I had lost a yak and was out the whole day looking for it. When I reached the mountain ridge (near the village),I saw six armed men dressed in black. They were shifting stones and making some kind of shelter,” recalls Tashi (46).

He informed a local formation of 3 Punjab,based down in the valley,about the intrusion. This led to patrol parties being dispatched by the Army to the heights of Batalik.

“I was called to the local Army unit to explain what I saw. The next day,I took a small party of jawans to the spot so that they could see it for themselves. After that several patrol parties were led up to the ridge,” he says.

The village of Garkon,one of the four in Batalik that boasts of a population of Aryan descendants,was in the thick of battle. In the three months that it took to dislodge the intruders,locals served as guides and porters for troops on the move. “We carried food and ammunition for the Army. Even our women worked to get food for our soldiers,” says Tashi.

Three years after the guns fell silent,he discovered the body of a missing Gurkha soldier in the same area,still clutching his carbine.

A decade on,Garkon has shown few signs of progress — it has a hard top road courtesy the Army and a medical care unit. But electricity and phones are missing. The only phone connection is at Tashi’s house — a military line set up by the Army in recognition of his service to the nation.