Ray of hopes for troops on 'highest battlefield'

A ceasefire has been in place across Kashmir since late 2003, and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has called the peace process "almost irreversible".

If the diplomatic thaw carries through to talks starting tomorrow in Islamabad it could bring about an overdue descent from the world's highest battlefield.

"There are hopeful signs of progress," said Niaz Naik, a retired Pakistani diplomat involved in the back-door diplomacy that led to the opening of a bus route across the Kashmiri ceasefire line in April.

But there will be little relief for soldiers keeping vigil on the glacier until the two governments show more trust. Summer arrived on Siachen this month. Temperatures rose to minus 10 degrees, after dropping to minus 40 in winter.

"Not even an enemy should have to go there. When I came back I felt I'd been granted life again," said ex-artillery gunner Mohammed Miskin, who served on Siachen with the Pakistan Army, almost two decades ago.

Miskin is still chilled by the memory of living in a battle zone standing between 18,000 and 22,000 feet, the breathlessness, the sores from snow burn, the isolation of living in bunkers cut from ice. His worst time was three days spent in a snow trench next to the corpse of a comrade hit in the neck by shrapnel.

But more men die from the extreme cold and life-sapping effects of reduced oxygen levels than from enemy fire in a place where artillery is rendered inaccurate by the thin air.

Others have lost their lives walking on the treacherous glacier, disappearing in crevasses hidden by fresh snowfalls or buried by avalanches that swept away patrols roped together for safety.