Wherever you travel in India and Pakistan, you will often see people playing an impromptu game of cricket on a stray patch of flat land. But I had not expected to see a game in progress on the world’s coldest, highest battlefield.
I was researching the Siachen war, fought between the two South Asian rivals over the glaciated wastelands of the Karakoram that lie at the point where India, Pakistan and China meet.
Our tiny helicopter landed at Gyari, where the Pakistan Army had set up a battalion headquarters on a snow-covered plateau at 13,000ft and barricaded by huge granite walls. At the height of the fighting, Gyari had been heavily shelled by Indian artillery. But shortly before my visit the two countries had declared a ceasefire.
