India has been on the back foot in its disputed Himalayan border region since early summer when it discovered Chinese troops had dug in on mountain ridges that New Delhi claimed as its own. After talks on a Chinese withdrawal failed, a vicious high-altitude brawl in June claimed the lives of 21 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese troops.
But last week India grabbed the initiative, sending thousands of troops to take possession of heights in the Chushul sector of the Kailash Range that gave them a strategic vantage point over Chinese border positions.
This competitive jockeying for position by rival armies in the treacherous, inhospitable terrain of Ladakh is part of a dangerous breakdown of a decades-old arrangement between the nuclear-armed neighbours, which fought a brief and bloody border war in 1962.