As Indo-Pak political leaders inch towards efforts to demilitarise the world's highest battlefield, Indian soldiers on the battlefront prepare themselves for another harsh winter.
The 72 km-long Siachen Glacier, where the mercury dips to 60° below freezing and the annual cumulative snowfall is 10 to 15 meters long is an issue which is likely to figure in the Indo-Pak foreign secretary-level talks beginning in Delhi on Tuesday.
While the two countries have come to a broad consensus on demilitarising the glacier, the hitch remains on modalities for putting in a monitoring mechanism to ensure that neither side surreptiously re-occupies these hieghts.
Unmindful of these parleys, for the soldiers guarding icy heights ranging from 6,000 to 7,000 metres, it is business as usual to mount a vigil on the glacier.
"We are fighting two enemies. Weather conditions are more of an enemy than the real enemy," commander of the Siachen Brigade Brigadier Om Prakash told a group of visiting journalists.
Apart from stockpiling of boots, warm clothes, special ration like dry fruits and juice, soldiers are readying themselves with training on ice-craft, how to operate weapons and survival techniques for extreme conditions.
Besides, they are being trained on how to spend longer periods in fibre glass huts, bunkers, ice caves and ice tunnels.
"Seventy nine per cent posts of our brigade are located above 16,000 feet while the Bana post is located at a height of 21,753 feet. So you can well imagine the degree of difficulty," Brigadier Prakash said.
