‘Kargil looked like a ghost town; life and death were just metres apart’
Srinagar: Kashmiri video journalist Tariq Lone, who was among the first journalists to reach the conflict zone and cover the Kargil War in 1999, has recounted his extraordinary and dangerous journey—how he risked his life to capture some of the very first visuals of the war, images that brought the reality of the battlefield to television screens and showed the world India’s fight for victory.
“When the Kargil War broke out, I was working as a stringer with Doordarshan Srinagar,” Lone recalls. A meeting was called at Doordarshan, attended by senior officials including the Director General of News from Delhi. When the official Doordarshan cameraman declined to travel to Kargil, Bashir Malik, an editor at Doordarshan, asked Lone and Ashraf Wani if they could go instead.
Lone and Wani were excited but knew they were heading into a war zone. No driver was willing to go to Kargil, but they eventually convinced a driver named Ghulam Mohammad. “We assured him that he would be safe with us. Even today, I remember the registration number of his car—JKT 3725. We paid him ₹5,000 just to drop us in Kargil,” Lone says.
When they reached Zojila, Lone began filming Indian Army fighter jets overhead and a convoy carrying Bofors guns towards the battlefront. Getting the footage back to Srinagar was a challenge. Lone met a truck driver heading to Srinagar, paid him ₹300, and requested him to deliver the cassette to Bashir Malik at Doordarshan Srinagar. The cassette reached safely, and Malik uplinked the footage to Delhi. “Soon, major national and international media organisations, including BBC and CNN, were broadcasting the footage,” Lone recalls.
When they entered Drass, the sight was devastating. “Much of the town appeared deserted and damaged. A tea vendor named Naseem warned us to be careful of Pakistani shelling and told us we were the first media persons he had seen arriving there.” The 60-kilometre journey to Kargil took nearly four hours as shelling was taking place from both sides.
“Kargil looked like a ghost town. People had left their homes and belongings behind. The silence of the town in the middle of a war was something I can never forget,” Lone says.
The next morning, they headed towards the frontline. “What I saw there has remained with me all these years. The scenes were breathtaking, but also terrifying—shelling, injured soldiers, and destroyed vehicles. These were no longer images of war that one watched on television. We were standing right in the middle of it.”
Lone continued reporting from the Kargil War for nearly two months. “There were many moments when I felt fortunate simply to be alive. I remember one incident when a shell struck a tanker just a few metres ahead of us. In a war zone, the difference between life and death could be just a few metres—or a few seconds.”
After the war ended, Lone went to Tiger Hill. “Some bodies of Pakistani intruders were still lying there. I saw Indian Army personnel give them a proper burial. Even after all the fighting and bloodshed, that moment stayed with me.”
“Those two months were a nightmare for me, and for everyone who was there covering the Kargil War. But they also became a part of my life that I can never forget,” Lone concludes.