THOUGHTS ON THE ZOJI LA

WILLIAM MCKAY (BILL) AITKEN

The Zoji La at 3580 m - 11,750 ft is said to be the lowest point on the crest of the Great Himalaya, though I have no idea why geology should be so lenient to this particular region. To make up for this apparent benign concession, the winter snows that settle over the Zoji La are said to reach a depth of fifty feet, hence its name based on a reputation for hosting unexpected blizzards. Whole convoys of trucks have been snowed in, their crews in recent times having to be rescued by helicopter pilots who perform heroic sorties. Despite this a hundred lives were lost in 1987 when early snow sealed in seventy vehicles. The Zoji La is also said to be the highest point at which armoured tanks have been deployed in a battle whose outcome in November 1948 enabled India to win back strategic control of Ladakh, which was in imminent danger of being lost to Pakistani raiders.

Six centuries earlier it was through this gap in the Great Range that the horsemen of Genghis Khan are said to have entered India on a reconnaissance. I use the word 'through' advisedly since unlike most other Himalayan passes which demand you go up, cross over and then come down the other side, the Zoji La after the initial steep pull from Baltal runs along the Mukund ridge before it enters the Gumri Basin. For another two miles winding through a defile, where the mountains rear steeply, the former staging hut for mail runners at Machhoi results only in a drop in altitude of 100 m- 300 ft. In view of this absence of any defined watershed the word 'passage' seems more appropriate than pass. The word pass connotes a defining moment of transition followed by an awareness of being on the other side of the mountain. For example the Rohtang pass's alpine greenery on the south gives way to the grey Trans- Himalayan aridity of the northern slopes the moment you crest the Pir Panjal. But even from its southern base the Zoji La though lower than the Rohtang pass appears to be an exception to the rule and looks harsh and intimidating. The initial climb from Baltal is severe whereas the descent to Dras from Gumri is comparatively gentle.

I accept that my views of the Zoji La may be jaundiced because the first time I crossed it I suffered the trauma of losing my camera, papers and money. I was on a Jawa motorbike in the halcyon days of 1986. Shaking off the monsoon rains at the Banihal tunnel I had coasted down to Srinagar for what I hoped would be a leisurely houseboat stay. When I witnessed in my hosts the predominant lakeside desire to rip off their guest (the mood being described accurately by Lonely Planet as 'acquiver with greed') I instead sped off northwards (as I supposed) to Leh - until I discovered Leh is positioned due east of Srinagar.

The next evening at Sonamarg, army traffic control for the Zoji La allowed me to pursue the departing convoy of a hundred overloaded trucks all groaning up the hairpin bends to the pass, spewing dust, diesel and for anyone at the back to doom. It was growing dark and any attempt to overtake on the narrow, tight, climbing rocky track might have found me back involuntarily at control - in the hospital. It was a murderous ascent done in whining first gear as I bucked blindly over the excruciating surface The Jawa (whom I called Mary Poppins for her reliability in getting me out of tight corners) boasted no battery so the headlight could only respond to speed, the one factor impossible to produce. By Captain's Corner and the start of the snow section I had managed to overtake half a dozen military behemoths. Frazzled by the strain and mindful of the bike's hot engine, I felt tea with a tot of rum was called for. But when I leaned back to unstrap my day bag (fixed with an elasticated grapnel over my luggage on the pillion,) I discovered it had gone - presumably bounced off by the rockiness of the ride.

Panic, disgust, disbelief crowded my thoughts. To go on seemed pointless with all the expedition's funds gone; to go back seemed to admit defeat and the last thing I needed was to add despair to my confusion. If the bag had fallen off it should still be lying on the road I argued, so turning the bike around I shot back down the way I had come. When I had passed the six ascending vehicles I had overtaken I stopped to ponder my next move. Surely they would have seen my luggage? It seemed like the end of the trip. Suddenly there was a shout from up the hill where the road coiled into a bend. Looking up I just caught sight of an arm waving to me out of the cab of a military truck, which then tantalizingly passed out of sight. Was this a sign or wishful thinking on my part? The only way to find out was to give chase. But now the bike wouldn't start. I scrabbled to unscrew the spark plug, scraping the skin off my fingers because of the cold then burning them on the metal as I clumsily re-set the gap. I lost fifteen minutes before Ms. Poppins fired and we could bounce back up to Captain's Corner with a modicum of hope to stem the flood of despair.

There was no parked convoy as I had hoped: all had driven through to catch the last light on the hardening icy surface of the passage through the pass. A few hundred yards ahead where the flinty road gave way to snow and slush an army truck had stalled on a climbing bend and the driver decided to reverse. Misjudging the slipperiness of the surface he turned the steering wheel too sharply and in slow motion before my eyes the truck backed itself into the void. Sickeningly with resounding force as the oil barrels in the back fell out and bounded down the khud, it disappeared over the edge, leaving behind the rending screams of mangled metal as the doomed vehicle hit rock projections on its hurtle back to the valley floor. Miraculously from the far side one of the crew had managed to throw himself out and lay stunned on the road. At that moment the Zoji La seemed the cruellest place in the world.

Numb with horror I was jerked out of my grief by a man from the teashop who came and handed over an empty cigarette carton on which was scribbled the number of a vehicle. 'The driver told me to give this to the motorcyclist' was all he vouchsafed. When I asked for further information, all he knew was that the convoy would spend the night in Dras. Here was a straw to clutch at. Cold, lonely and distraught, mine was the last vehicle to go through the pass. If the bike broke down the prospects were grim - but surely no grimmer than the mood that assailed me here at Captain's Corner. I trusted in Mary Poppins ability to get me through the now benighted top section and willed her in the chill wind up and over what seemed like cobbles until they gave way to a nala into which the bike crashed, sometimes shipping two feet of glacial run-off, the icy water coming up to my knees. In the pitch dark when the engine stalled in the middle of these freezing torrents I could hear two things: the nearby howling of wolves and the thump of my quickened heartbeat. To add to the apprehension I recalled that I was heading to Dras, which claims to be the second coldest place in the world. Surely the world has got the temperature of Hell wrong?

Thankfully, Mary Poppins was unimpressed by hellish statistics as - Allelujah! - a gravel road opened up before her headlight. I looked down and saw far below the lights of what could only be Dras. In that stricken silence as I descended the loops my lone Jawa must have sounded like a jumbo jet coming in to land. As I drove towards the village, I passed a parked convoy and there standing by the roadside was the most heart warming sight of the day welcoming - an army Havildar waving me down with the only words I wanted to hear: Aap ka bag milgaya (I found your bag).

Havildar Harbans Singh of Una was in charge of the convoy bringing up the rear and had spotted my bag on the road. While studying my driving licence in his cab I had driven past on my way down and it was he who had called out and waved. The gradient prevented him from stopping but he had left the scribbled number at Captain's Corner guessing I would return to check his waved signal. He and his crew shared their supper with me in the glow of the truck's headlights and then I adjourned to spend the night in the draughty village. Next morning when I wanted to reward the Havildar's exemplary behaviour (there were three thousand rupees in the bag as well as cameras and film) he stoutly refused on the grounds of regimental etiquette.

On my return from Leh I wrote a letter of commendation to the army but this elicited no immediate response. Then a young army officer I met offered to deliver a copy of my letter to the commanding officer of the transport regiment who serviced the Zoji La convoys. That did the trick and I eventually heard from the Havildar (now retired as Subedar in Una, H.P.) who proudly announced that he had received not one but two rewards for the credit he had brought to his regiment.(It seems my original letter had also fetched up before an appreciative defence ministry.)

It was only on my return journey over the Zoji La that I stopped to read the brief citation marking another instance of heroic military behaviour. This roadside monument merely announced the victory of the Seventh Light Cavalry of the Indian army using a squadron of tanks in a highly improbable battle that gained control of the pass and the road to Leh. This seemed a slim tribute to the genius and audacity of the officer who planned it (General Thimayya ) and to the courage and endurance of the other ranks who snatched victory from the jaws of a Zoji La blizzard. Overnight the citizens of Leh were delivered from looting tribal raiders and made secure in a democratic polity. But it was a close run thing, an adventure that could have gone horribly wrong. Why hasn't this Himalayan version of Hannibal's 'elephants over the Alps' epic become public knowledge and entered Indian folklore? I pondered this on a second crossing of the Zoji La in 1986 while returning from a Zanskar trek.

Because of a two-day traffic hold up, I decided to walk through the pass and had the satisfaction after setting out at 6 in the morning from Drass to be in Sonamarg by teatime. Along the way I followed the ancient alignment for mules as well as take some shortcuts. Also I benefited from short lifts between military camps by jeeps. Only after midnight in the Sonamarg tourist bungalow did the thunder of the passing convoy announce that the pass had been cleared.

that climbing up the Zoji La from either end is the least hard part. It is in negotiating the winding passage between towering ranges that gets to the traveller especially when the clouds seal in the wind and you feel trapped by nature and betrayed by semantics. A pass ought to entail the act of passing, of leaving behind, not getting ensnared amongst complex mountain terrain.

Anyone caught on the Zoji La in a blizzard is a sitting duck and curiously 'Operation Duck' was the original name given for the Indian army's assault to win back Ladakh. (To put more beef into it, the operation was renamed 'Bison.') I had to wait until 1999 until I discovered these details in an account of the battle by a civilian eyewitness who sketched and filmed part of it. In another flash of genius General Thimayya had appointed the notable Himalayan landscape artist Serbjeet Singh along with his filmmaker brother to record in film and on canvas the progress of Operation Bison. Serbjeet amassed an invaluable artistic archive, which only saw the light of day when the army top brass woke up to its unique historical value. Called Zoji La, 1st November 1948 the book is dedicated to the 77 Parachute Brigade (responsible for the overall operation) and published on behalf of the Director General Mechanised Forces at Army Headquarters incorporating Serbjeet's illustrations along with memoirs by old soldiers who contributed to the taking of the pass. Sponsored by the BPL Group this is an exciting and inspiring book that deserves a mention in the Himalayan Journal for the qualities of courage, ingenuity and sacrifice displayed by ordinary soldiers in taking on the Zoji La in winter and beating the odds. (The commandant in charge of the supporting mountain batteries was Lt Col Gian Singh.)

The tanks made the crucial difference. Since September 1948 infantry attempts to dislodge the enemy from the pass had proved futile. Time was of the essence and if the Leh garrison was not relieved by November 1948 the whole of Ladakh would be lost to India when winter snow snapped road communications. When the conventional approach failed, Major General Thimayya turned to psychology. First (with strawberries and cream!) he charmed Meher Singh the legendary Air Chief into personally landing their Dakota on the untried Leh airstrip to prove its worthiness then sent in a company of Gorkhas to strengthen its garrison. Then in a last gamble of the dice to get men into Leh by road, Thimayya decided to clear the Zoji La by calling in the cavalry. This was an unprecedented decision since tanks had never been used at such altitudes and may not even function on the severe gradient. Based on his experience of war in the Burmese hills however 'Timmy' knew that more than blasting bunkers the mere sight of tanks made the most hardened of soldiers throw in the towel. The new Indian army had no winter clothing available for the freezing undertaking and was often reduced to dry rations. With the temperature at minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit each man was supplied two blankets to survive the cold. The general personally handed over diwali sweets to all the men involved in the assault.

The general only had six weeks to prepare and launch this highly controversial plan before winter settled the fate of Ladakh. The first step in the complicated planning lay in the ordinary jawan's maintenance of secrecy. The Stuart tanks had to be stripped of their turrets to look like Bren gun carriers and then brought by night to tread Kashmir's flimsy roads and bridges. Then the mule track to the pass had to be strengthened and widened, an undertaking performed brilliantly against a tight schedule by Major Thangaraju also by night to avoid enemy fire. The tank squadron was kept perfectly concealed in an enlarged cave in the lee of the pass, its existence unknown to both armies. The greatest imponderable was whether a tank would operate in the oxygen-thin air of the Zoji La? Doubters were many and luckily there were more on the Pakistani side. When it was reported to Pak sector headquarters that tanks were storming the Zoji La, the official reaction was to laugh at the idea and dismiss it as an Indian ruse to pass off jeeps disguised as tanks. To add to the irony, only the driver rode in the tank, the rest of the crew were ordered to walk behind in case of accidents. At places the trail was so narrow the tread of the tank overlapped the edge.

D-day could be not later than 31 October when winter snow would prevent access till the following June. This closely guarded secret operation was named 'Sparrow' after the nickname of commandant of the 7th Cavalry Lt Col Rajinder Singh. Bad weather on the 31st made the planned assault impossible and on the morning of the 1 November the forecast was more snow. It was now or never. 'To hell with the meteorological report' said Thimayya and ordered the attack to begin. His gamble paid off and the falling snow would turn out to be his ace since it blanketed out enemy awareness of what was about to hit them. Despite the narrowness of the road, its alignment served the purpose and the tanks rumbled up (long before Yankee politicians thought of it) to shock and awe the opposition. Within four hours Ladakh had been - in effect -liberated, though it took the best part of November and only after fierce hand-to-hand fighting for Kargil to be taken. A month and a cease-fire later Leh was safe as part of the Indian union.

So convinced was the Pakistani command that tanks could never ascend the pass that they neither positioned anti-tank guns nor laid mines, with the result that all seven tanks got through to their objective without any loss to man or machine. When the leading tank (called 'Chindit') crested the Zoji La out of the mist, the astonished Pakistan sector commander radioed his blasé superior and was told amidst choice expletives 'not to be so bloody stupid.' (The expletives would be repeated in the Matyayan bungalow visitors book when Gian Singh on behalf of the victorious Gunners wrote: 'We maroed (hit) the B.C's left right and centre' ( B.C's in the vernacular referring to a sensitive part of the anatomy.)

When some visiting Indian dignitaries were taken to Gumri to view the site of the victory, they collapsed from the cold and had to be revived with brandy and rum. At this time in the Indian Parliament a motion had been tabled to discontinue the supply of rum to Indian troops but on realising how the genie in the bottle could contribute to success on the battlefield there were some second thoughts on the subject. To prove the proposition that the Zoji La is more of a passage than a pass it took the victors more than two days to reach Machhoi and tank support had to be enlisted again before Dras was taken on 15 November. The tanks returned to Baltal the same day the Zoji La was sealed in for winter. At Gumri were 300 brand new jeeps waiting to be delivered to Leh. They were along with supplies and rations completely snowed under. The following May to the huge relief of General Virender Singh the jeeps' ignition started at the first switch.

Lt Col Narayan Singh's men in charge of mule supplies to the front, on returning from Gumri to Baltal on 15 December could cover only three miles in six hours and lost 29 loaded mules in the white-out. The colonel at this time was blessed with a baby daughter and called her 'Zoji La.' Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this battle was the mix of jawans from different provinces who combined selflessly to make this victory possible. From Coorgi General to South Indian road builder, from Gorkha and Maratha infantrymen to Patiala cavalrymen and pilot, from Punjabi gunner to Haryanavi muleteer, from plains engineer to pahari nursing staff, this was an almost superhuman effort by men who shared belief in the motto of the group who sponsored this book: 'Believe in the best.'

SUMMARY

Author's travel across the formidable Zozi La pass which links Kashmir to Ladakh valleys. He recalls the Indo-Pakistan War of 1947 when the Indian army brought tanks up this pass and surprised the enemy.

Refer to the book

Zozi La 1 November 1948, by Serbjeet Singh. Pp. 154, many colour and b/w illustrations, maps, 1999. (Vanity Books, New Delhi, nps).

 

⇑ Top