With nearly zero visibility and no idea about our whereabouts, we continued walking till we finally reached our campsite at 9 pm. Within 30 minutes of walking on the iced-up river, we came to a spot where the water had not fully frozen. We were advised to shed all our wet clothes and get into our sleeping bags, where we were shaking and shivering. At one point, I felt I was hallucinating and ended up imagining all the worst possible scenarios of never making it back and not seeing my loved ones. Unfortunately, this wasn’t our much anticipated campsite. Without any delay, we jumped into the van — relieved, tired and happy.The next morning, despite heavy snowfall, we started the 11-kilometre-long walk and reached Tibb.

It caused a bottleneck of trekkers who were ahead of us, trying to climb over the rocks on the sides to get to the other side of the water. We walked back on the same route, which was now completely covered in white. The combination of the freezing temperatures, exhaustion from walking all day, snowfall and darkness started working on our minds and it began to feel beyond surreal. An ice bridge essential to our continuing the trek had sunk and there was absolutely no way forward. We were beginning to freeze and for the next 30 minutes, we just waited quietly for our entire team to make it to where we were. It got dark fast, too, and we started walking with our head torches on. At this point, we were very close to Naerak, our next campsite, but had to head back the China Wholesale Foldable Gazebos way we came. With the setting sun, we hung around outside our tent with glasses of hot lemon-ginger-honey tea, watching the clear, star-filled night sky — unlike anything we see in the city. Finally home, I will say one thing for any one who plans to experience this trek — be prepared to come back changed. As we got closer to Chilling, we met the van with the two team members who had left the previous evening to arrange for us to get out of the mess. Amidst the snowfall, we realised how trekking was even more exhausting than we imagined. Somewhere, before I fell asleep and slept like a baby, I vaguely realised that we had walked around 40 kilometres that day!The next morning, we were told that we had to leave for Leh since the weather was going to worsen over the next few days. Life as you know it will never be the same again!. Five hours, six breaks, and 20 kilometres later, we reached a point where our advance team was waiting for us.We drove to the first camp, at Lower Shingra, the point where Chadar Trek officially begins. We wanted to catch an empty cave on the way back to pitch our tents in and retire for the night, but we found none.

 The following day, we trekked 12 kilometres towards Chilling, the nearest town, climbing through two landslides that had occurred in the past few days. We helplessly watched a few other trekkers (who weren’t suitably geared up) slip, fall and hurt themselves.Soon after breakfast the next day, we left our camp with our expedition leader. Due to the heavy snowfall, we had given up trekking until two men from the campsite ahead of us informed us that it was safe to move ahead. We spent two days just trying to adjust to the high altitude by strolling through town in full trekking gear. The campsite looked like a mini-town of tents and porters. That was when we left Tibb. We rested for the night at Tsomo and left the next day for Lower Shingra, where we reached in the afternoon.The Chadar trek is one of the most exhilarating winter treks in the world, attracting hordes of thrill seekers every year between January and March, the period when the Zanskar river is completely frozen over.

We covered 14 kilometres in four hours, and successfully reached Tsomo through stunning mountain topography.I landed in Leh with two friends in the early hours of the morning to temperatures of -17°C. We even walked to the Shanti Stupa, including 700 steps, all the way to the top just getting used to temperatures and the terrain! The next day we headed off towards Leh Castle and Leh Palace in a tough one-hour long climb, that was totally worth it for the view. Now that we were used to the temperatures, we had to get used to walking on the icy river surface. What kept us going though was the urge to make it back to Tibb and finally back home. When the team finally did, it took us another 30 minutes to set up camp and we finally got into our tents.

The villagers have locked their homes, leaving almost all household items inside, with many of them taking just some essential items and their livestock with them..The officials said that the administration has set up make-shift tent camps and arranged food facilities for the dislocated. Also, hundreds of people have moved out of the areas falling in close proximity of the de facto border in the Kashmir Valley region including Uri, Gurez and Tangdhar sectors of party tent wholesale Baramulla, Bandipore and Kupwara districts.Chuni Lal and his family, like most of their neighbours, have since relocated to Khour, a village 29 km from Pallanwalla, where they are using a school building and nearby temple premises as temporary accommodation." No casualties were reported on either side.

Officials said that more than 30,000 people have left their homes in the four districts — Kathua, Samba and Jammu — along the IB and the LoC.Many villages along the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan in the Kathua-Samba-Jammu-Rajouri belt were completely deserted by Saturday, despite people initially showing a reluctance to leave. Officials said that many of the 150 villages identified by them as "most vulnerable" due to their close proximity to the IB and the LoC, have been evacuated of civilian population in anticipation of Pakistani troops’ retaliatory action to the "surgical strikes" conducted by the Indian Army across the LoC. A statement issued by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) in Islamabad said, "Pakistani troops befittingly responded to Indian unprovoked firing which started at 4 am and continued till 8 am at LoC in Bhimber sector today. Most of them are now staying in school buildings, community halls and places of worship, and the authorities are struggling hard to provide them basic amenities at their temporary accommodations.Among those relocated is Anjli, who had married a youth from a neighbouring village just a day before officials arrived at Pallanwala to ask residents to leave, "for their own safety".

When it stopped after few hours, we packed up, taking only personal items with us," said Manohar Singh Jamwal, another resident. She was still in her bridal dress when the family of six boarded a tractor-trolley at Pallanwala on Saturday morning to relocate to Khour. But, following intense firing incidents from across the border on Saturday morning, the villagers left Pallanwala and neighbouring areas and have since relocated to "safer locations" about 20 km to 35 km away from the border. Last evening, the Army also told us to move out and then firing started at 4 am, which soon became intense. Some families have moved further away to Jourian (61 km from Jammu city) and a few have gone to Pounichak and Jammu to stay with their relatives.They confirmed that initially, the border-dwellers were reluctant to leave their homes even as the authorities declared a high alert and asked for the evacuation of civilians from villages falling within 10 km from the border."Frankly speaking, we had, over the past two days, ignored repeated calls from the police and the administration to leave.Officials said that the Pakistan Rangers targeted Border Security Force (BSF) positions along the LoC in Akhnoor sector on Saturday using small arms and automatic guns. Apart from Jammu and Kashmir, the other border states of Punjab, Rajasthan and Gujarat are also on alert, with the BSF having deployed its units along the IB as a pre-emptive measure. What is, however, more painful for the dwellers — most of them farmers — this time is that they had also to leave behind the standing basmati crops unattended. However, the Pakistani authorities alleged that it were the BSF which initiated the firing. "The BSF retaliated, using the same calibre weapons," they added. "We are used to such dislocations and, in fact, this was a routine phenomenon prior to the (November) 2003 ceasefire (agreement between India and Pakistan)," Jamwal said."

There was intense firing around 4am today and the moment it stopped, we left," said Chuni Lal of Pallanwala village, which is located at a stone-throw distance from the LoC in the Akhnoor sector of Jammu district.Earlier, authorities closed schools and other educational institutions in those areas indefinitely and sent buses to the border belt to transport residents out from areas that have been declared as "out of bounds for any civilian movement". There were several tanks stationed outside an Army camp at Jourian when reporters visited the area around noon on Saturday. Pallanwala, 84 km west of winter capital Jammu, has been completely deserted.

"The soldier, who was immediately retrieved and evacuated to the nearest medical facility, could not be revived by the medical team," defence spokesperson Colonel S.Lance Havildar Bhawan Tamang, one of the two soldiers rescued earlier from beneath several feet of deep snow after he and his colleague were swept away by the avalanche, succumbed to his injuries at a medical facility in the area close to the Line of Control (LoC). Immediate rescue drills resulted in one soldier being rescued while the second soldier is still missing.In a similar incident two Army jawans were swept away when an avalanche triggered by a mild earthquake hit an Army post in Biamah area at an altitude of 17,500 feet above sea level close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil sector. Gen. Hooda, Northern Command chief, has expressed his deep condolences to the family of the victim.Lt. The victim was a resident of Vallaramapuram village of Thirunelvelli district of Tamil Nadu.

A tenth soldier Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, a resident of Betadur village in Dharwad district of Karnataka, was miraculously pulled out alive from an ‘arctic tent’ buried under 25 feet of frost and snow though in critical condition by the rescuers on February 8, six days after the incident.Col. Goswami said. D. The Kashmir Valley with neighbouring areas is experiencing moderate to heavy rainfall for the past two days. The avalanche prone areas which come under the custom gazebo canopy warning are located at an altitude of above 3,000 metres and fall in frontier districts of Kupwara, Baramula, Bandipur and Kargil and Gandarbal.N.S.A report from Baramulla said that traffic along the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road was affected after a major portion of it in Lagama area of Uri in north Kashmir began sinking following heavy rains on Friday. Several parts of the Himalayan region have also received snowfall, reports said." Turtuk in Nubra Valley at a height of 10,000 feet above sea level is pretty close to the Line of Control (LoC) and was part of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir prior to 1971 war. Tamang was a resident of Lopshu village in Darjeeling tehsil of West Bengal.D. The advisory, issued by Chandigarh-based Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) which comes under the Ministry of Defence, will remain effective over the next 24 hours beginning 5 pm on Friday.."He added, "The rescued soldier is critical and is being evacuated to the nearest military hospital. Meanwhile, a ‘medium danger’ avalanche warning was on Friday issued for higher areas of Jammu and Kashmir, advising people not to venture into these areas. All efforts are being made to rescue the missing soldier".

But his colleague Sepoy Vijay Kumar K went who went missing in the mishap and his frozen lifeless body was retrieved from under fifteen feet of snow accumulated in the area of avalanche occurrence three days later by the rescuers. But he too died in Army’s Research and Referral Hospital, Delhi three days later.In the second such incident in past nine days, an Army jawan has died and another is missing after a military foot patrol was hit by an avalanche in Turtuk area of Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday morning. N.The defence spokesperson said that "massive efforts" are underway to rescue the other jawan "in spite of inclement weather in the area.