AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 164 of 237 27 “Par-Tea” at Amarnath Col R Balaswamy Genre: Life in the Forces When: August 1970 Characters: 120 Engineer officers and jawans from the E&M Specialist Unit traveling from Panagarh, West Bengal to Ladakh. Nerve wracking incidents from the past can so beautifully mellow into amusing anecdotes! I now happily recall such an incident from August 1970 when I was part of the E&M Specialist unit, traveling from Panagarh, West Bengal to Ladakh. En route Pathankot, we were housed in a special train of 2 coaches – the usual fauji opulence of bathing on the railway platforms, merry making with only anecdotes, cooking for and by ourselves, sleeping on hard bedding rolls with an arm for a headrest (or an inflatable pillow for some foresighted souls) was very much a part of this journey. However, the tediousness came from multiple halts that involved waiting in platforms for over 7 hours for clearance or to hook on to the next train, and so, we optimised that time cooking our meals! On reaching Pathankot, we had to wait for 3 whole days before moving on to Baltal (J&K). Baltal was approximately 11000 feet above sea level and we had to acclimatize, or if I may be fashionable in keeping with the times, “quarantine” ourselves. The unit was informed that Amarnath (a Hindu shrine in J&K which houses the famous “Ice Lingam”) was located just 14 km away from where we were staying. And incidentally, August 14 happened to be a full moon day, which was considered very auspicious to visit Amarnath. The group was excited on hearing this and some of us decided to make the trip to Amarnath the following morning. We were 40 people, and sufficiently warned about