A well-maintained
path leads to a rock
patio for prayer at
the Gora I post. “We
never discuss hardships
with our families,”
one soldier says. “We
just say we are happy
and enjoying life.”
glaring problem: “The line of control, which was
then called Cease Fire Line and ended at point
NJ9842, had been mischievously or inadver-
tently or deliberately [altered].”
Thus, Bull Kumar discovered Hodgson’s line.
He took his discovery to Lt. Gen. M.L. Chibber,
then India’s director of military operations. Paki-
stan is occupying thousands of square kilometers
of land on its own, he thundered, “and we know
nothing!” As supporting evidence, Kumar and
Chibber soon learned from the American Alpine
Journal that a Japanese mountaineering team,
accompanied by a Pakistan Army captain, had
visited the upper Siachen two summers before.
Kumar offered to lead a patrol under the guise
of a mountaineering expedition to gather intel-
ligence. More Indian patrols followed in the late
1970s and early 1980s, while Pakistan authorized
several additional climbing expeditions to the
glacier during the same period. In August 1983
the Pakistan Army sent a formal note of protest to
its counterparts in India: “Request instruct your
troops to withdraw beyond Line of Control south
of line joining Point NJ9842, Karakoram Pass NE
7410 immediately. I have instructed my troops to
show maximum restraint. But any delay in vacat-
ing our territory will create a serious situation.”
The Pakistan Army was now claiming Hodg-
son’s line as its boundary. By then, the line had
been included in dozens of maps printed by
numerous agencies, all under the seal of the U.S.
government. Such was the quiet influence of the
Office of the Geographer that the boundary had
spread to commercial publishers. Beginning in
1981, it showed up in the National Geographic
Atlas of the World as a tiny dotted line less than an114 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC