FLOWERS ON A KARGIL CLIFF, VIKRAM JIT SINGH

"At 15,700 feet, I was clinging for dear life. Like a lizard's belly I had pressed my body tight into a cliff of the Kargil War. There was no safety rope around my waist to secure my passage along the cliff wall, which was near-perpendicular in stretches. My hands and feet had the barest of holds and pressing against the cliff wall was the only safeguard against the forces of gravity that would send me plummeting thousands of feet below into the Gragario nallah."

Posted with The Indian Express in Kashmir and later, during the Kargil War, Vikram Jit Singh is that rare breed of war correspondents who took grave risks to their lives in the line of duty. Embedded with Army's seek-and-destroy columns, he climbed Safapora mountains at night to hunt down killers of 23 Wandhama Pandits.