In the summer of 1999, as India grappled with heat waves and awaiting monsoon, the icy winds of Dras carried with them an ominous silence. Snow still clung to the jagged ridges of the Himalayas, and temperatures, even in June, hovered perilously along the lines of sub-zero. Amid these cold, breathless heights, Kargil War was brewing. A war born of betrayal and audacity. It would become one of the most defining episodes in India’s modern military history.
The peaks above the Srinagar–Leh highway had been quietly occupied by Pakistani soldiers disguised as militants. Among them stood is Tololing. A formidable, rocky mass towering over National Highway 1A, the crucial artery feeding supplies to Indian troops stationed across Ladakh. Whoever held Tololing controlled the road; and whoever lost it, risked losing the entire region.
And who controlled it, was Pakistan. It aimed to cut-off the Skardu Link, which would have prevented logistics reinforcement of troops stationed in Siachen and other regions of Ladakh.
But Major Rajesh Adhikari wasn’t having any of it… What happened then was an impossible climb, a morphine-less shell wound, the steering that changed the course of Kargil War and the birth of a legend.
About Tololing
The mountain doesn’t look particularly majestic. From a distance, Tololing blends into the jagged spine of Ladakh, one ridge among hundreds. But it rises abruptly from the floor of the Dras Valley, a stark mass of dark rock and fractured ridgelines that doesn’t invite the eye so much as challenge it. From the highway below, it appears close, almost reachable, but the climb tells another story. The slopes are harsh and angular, scattered with loose scree that slides underfoot. There’s no tree cover, no vegetation, no relief from the icy cold wind that whips through the valley and scrapes across the ridge with a dry, biting hiss.
At an altitude of around 15,000 feet, the oxygen thins fast. The climb begins in a dust-stained silence and ascends into brittle air where breathing becomes laboured and voices vanish into the wind. The gradient increases steadily, turning into steep shelves and exposed inclines. Footing is unreliable. The rock fractures easily. Some sections crumble into fine shale; others jut out like blades.
There are no gentle curves here. The terrain is broken and sharp. The hill offers a clear view of the surrounding valley, especially the winding ribbon of NH-1A, which cuts through the lowlands below. From Tololing’s upper reaches, a person can track movement for kilometres in either direction. The ridge itself snakes upward in uneven segments, marked by narrow ledges and vertical scrambles.
Even in the warmest months, frost clings to the shaded crevices.
It is a mountain that doesn’t care for company. Unyielding and exposed, it forces the body to work against every inch of ascent. And in doing so, it reveals exactly why anyone who occupies its crest commands an entire valley’s fate.
The Approach
There were no two ways about it. Tololing had to be taken back. As Indian troops inched closer under cover of night, they began to understand what kind of beast they were up against. The night of June 12, 1999, brought no moonlight, just a silence heavy with anticipation. The Indian Army launched its first major assault on Tololing that night.
The approach to Tololing began under cover of night, but darkness offered little comfort. The soldiers of 18 Grenadiers moved in silence, stretched out in staggered files, their boots muffled against dust and stone. The mountain consumed sound. It made no allowance for weight or caution.
There was no trail. Only a direction. The men moved up the lower slopes first, loose shale, brittle rock that shifted with the slightest pressure. Each movement risked sending stones clattering downslope, and with enemy observation posts above, even a single misplaced footstep could mean discovery. So they moved slowly, testing each patch of ground, every handhold. Rifles slung tight across their backs, ropes coiled across shoulders, they climbed more like mountaineers than infantry.
As the gradient increased, the group broke into smaller assault teams, spreading out to avoid becoming easy targets. The air grew thinner, sharper. Every breath required effort. The weight of their packs became a quiet, constant punishment. Communication dropped to hand signals. The men closest to the top could already feel frost seeping through their gloves.
They clung to shadows and the shape of the land. Large boulders offered fleeting shelter, but between them, the ridge was exposed, a bare stone under moonlight. With every metre gained, the sense of risk deepened. The Pakistani positions above couldn’t be seen, but they were there, dug into bunkers carved into the rock. Watching. Waiting. Machine gun fire could erupt from nowhere, and mortars could find you even in darkness.
The Battle
The objective was clear: retake the ridge that towered above NH-1A and threatened to cut Ladakh off from the rest of the country. The plan was straightforward, a frontal advance under darkness. But on a mountain like Tololing, nothing is ever simple.
As the company drew closer, just a few hundred metres from the enemy positions, they were spotted. The silence shattered. Enemy guns opened fire from multiple heights. Heavy machine guns raked the slope, and mortar rounds began thumping the ground around them, flinging rock splinters like shrapnel. The Indian advance stalled briefly under the barrage. But Adhikari did not flinch.
He moved among his men, repositioning them, adjusting their fire arcs, shouting over the noise to get them into better cover. He made no effort to hide, only to lead. His calm under fire stopped the slope from turning into a massacre. When his soldiers hesitated, he moved first. When they were pinned, he returned fire and advanced further, drawing enemy attention to himself to give others a chance to reposition.
In the middle of this chaos, a mortar fragment tore into him. Wounded and bleeding, he refused evacuation. He lay in the open, still directing his troops, pointing out targets, instructing radio operators, marking approaches for flanking teams. Several soldiers would later recall seeing him refuse morphine, fearing it would cloud his mind.
Eventually, as he continued giving orders, a second, direct burst of enemy fire struck him fatally.
His last known actions were directing suppressive fire and calling for coordinated movement towards the enemy’s nearest bunker. In the moments before he died, the attack he had led regained momentum. His company surged forward, motivated by the memory of how he had stood, fought, and refused to fall back.
Inch by Inch
The Indian soldiers came again the next night, and the next. There was no respite. The incline remained just as steep, the wind just as cruel, and the enemy just as entrenched. The Grenadiers fought with every muscle stretched to its limit, hands blistered from gripping ice-cold rock, shoulders torn from hauling gear, minds focused only on the next step forward.
Support was building behind them. The Indian artillery, particularly the 155 mm Bofors, was now fully engaged. From positions near Dras and Matayan, the guns roared upwards, their shells hammering enemy bunkers and softening defences. The valley floor lit up in the dead of night, and the explosions echoed off the cliffs, bouncing sound across the Himalayas. Each shell landing above was a message: you are being hunted.
Still, it wasn’t enough. Tololing was laced with trenches, sandbagged bunkers, and machine gun nests cleverly dug into the rock. Pakistani forces had occupied the high ground for weeks, and their defences had been laid with grim anticipation. Every inch the Grenadiers took was paid for twice, once in blood, and again in exhaustion.
Flanking the Unflankable
It was clear that frontal assaults were bleeding the men dry. That’s when tactical shifts began. Instead of charging headlong, Indian commanders ordered more aggressive flanking moves—scaling ridgelines from the sides under darkness, using the natural creases of the mountain as cover. These were climbs made on hands and knees, in absolute silence, often with little more than intuition guiding the way.
Night after night, sections advanced from unexpected angles, taking out enemy bunkers in brutal close combat. Hand grenades, bayonets, and silence, this was trench warfare at fifteen thousand feet. One by one, the enemy’s outposts began to fall.
Among those pushing through was Captain Vijayant Thapar of 2 Rajputana Rifles, a young officer with fire in his heart and ice in his veins. He led his men through one of the final and most grueling pushes. In the hours before he was killed in action, he wrote a letter home. In it, he asked his family not to mourn, but to be proud. That letter is now etched into memory, an unfiltered look into the mind of a soldier who knew he would not see the sunrise, and walked on anyway.
Victory and the View Beyond
By June 20, the summit was in Indian hands. There was no trumpet, no ceremony, just the quiet act of hoisting the Indian flag into a wind so cold it stung the skin. But its meaning cut through the chill. Tololing was the first major victory in the Kargil War, a ridgeline wrested back through sheer persistence and ingenuity.
The psychological effect was immediate. Indian troops now had momentum. Public morale soared. The myth that the heights were impenetrable began to collapse. Tololing gave the army not just a foothold, but a belief that everything ahead, Tiger Hill, Point 5140, and beyond, was within reach.
Strategic Consequence
Tololing directly overlooked NH-1A, the critical artery connecting Srinagar to Leh. Had it remained in enemy hands, supply lines to Ladakh would have been permanently under threat. Its recapture allowed Indian forces to stabilise the theatre and plan for successive operations without the sword constantly hanging over their logistical lifeline.
But even beyond its tactical utility, Tololing became something else. A legend. A place where the impossible was challenged simply with boots on stone, one after another, through cold, blood, and wind.
