AFVOA Newsletter May 2020

Section 3 - Memoirs Newsletter No. 1 / 2020 P a g e 52 | 101 As a lonely Captain living in a Mongol, I felt isolated. No Officers Mess- food would come from the Langar. My orderly will bring breakfast and dinner to my hut and lunch will be with troops at work site! In those days, there was no TV, no cell phone and no radio even. I had a car battery operated light for reading at night before going to sleep in the warmth of my sleeping bag. Outside temperature used to be around-10 degrees C during the summer! It was isolation at its worst. The silence in the night was so thick, you can cut it with a knife. One could hear the water flowing down the stream to join the Indus River at Leh. Our task was to construct a 1 MW micro hydel project by blocking a tributary of Indus. The water was to be taken along the ridge of the mountain and dropped about 700ft through a penstock and run a Pelton Wheel coupled to a generator. It was highly skilled and technical job. The 15 Corps Commander, Gen Kandeth visited the site. He asked me “young man, you mean to say that water from the weir will reach that point “? He did not believe it. Well, many did not. I asked the JCO to open the water from the weir. Within five minutes’ water was falling from the point where penstock pipe was being laid. He appreciated the excellent work and wished me good luck. We had our moments of joy and thrill when the generator run by water from penstock produced electricity and lighted the bulb! Two things stand out as moral of this article. One, Sappers can do wonders under any situation. Two, isolation and hard work have their own rewards. So, do not complain about the lockdown. We will emerge victorious.