For those in the army, the name Tilla means the artillery and tank firing range to the south of Jhelum cantonment. That was how I also knew it until November 1974. It was my second or third time out with the regiment for practice firing at Tilla Ranges. (Like Ayaz Amir, I too was an ack-ack gunner, but of the SP, self Propelled type). The days were bright and sunny, the nights ablaze with stars, the weather so beautiful as to make you go crazy and to the west there rose the great massif of the Tilla hill which I now know by its proper name: Tilla Jogian -- Hill of the Jogis.

One day, in a lull in military business, I was idly scanning the hill with a pair of binoculars when I espied, right there on the summit, a clump of buildings. One of my NCOs who came from a nearby village told me that the buildings were all deserted. That was enough to fire the imagination of a twenty-two year old lieutenant who was more interested in ruins and deserted places than in the 37 mm anti-aircraft guns he was supposed to master.

And there was Shahid Ahmed, who had joined the regiment from PMA only the month before. He was the only one of us 'young officers' who I knew would be interested in what captivated me. So I one day invited him to look. The army-issue one inch topographical map showed us there were paths leading up the flanks of the hill right up to the summit and, having picked out the village where we were to start our walk, there developed the plan to return to explore Tilla.

And so the first weekend after we had returned to Kharian at the culmination of our exercise, the two of us rode a bus back to Jhelum. We got on the rattletrap of a bus going south to the village were we had planned to start walking -- for the life of me I have not been able to recall the name of this village. In our haversacks we had a roast chicken, water and a tin of 'Fruit Cocktail' canned by a well-known company of Lahore. The plan was to sleep in the village mosque, rise early when the worshippers came in and set out to climb the hill. As we walked through the village, we asked a man for the mosque. Why, he wanted to know, did we want the mosque. To spend the night there, I said.

He roughly took me by the hand and said we should come with him. As he steered me down the street with Shahid in tow, he told us that the people of the village were still alive and that we would not be permitted to sleep in the mosque. The good man, a retired subedar from the army, took us home. By a pond, he laid out two charpais and bedding under a spreading tree. We ate our chicken despite his protestations and were soon drifting off to sleep.

It was a glorious night. A pair of owls (I now know they would have been Collared Scops owls) kept watch over us from the branches above and every now and then let out a little hoot to warn us that they were there. I woke every couple of hours to look out for the progress of the celestial hunter Orion across the velveteen black sky. We were up early to wash in the pond while the good subedar served up a huge breakfast of milky tea and parathas. And then in the golden light of early morning we set off. Young in body and full of vigour, we made short work of the climb and were soon way above the village.

We paused to examine the mine shafts outside which heaps of slag lay compacted by the heavy rains of the past monsoon. Pushing through a great tangle of bushes (I now know it as Bhekar or Adhatoda vasica) we were surprised by a large oblong stone-lined pond. Brimming with muddy water and fringed by lovely pipal and banyan trees it was a right picturesque little spot bursting with the song of birds I could not then identify. The years 1973 and '74 had had great monsoon rains and never again, in the two dozen times I have climbed up to Tilla Jogian, have I seen this pond even half full.

On the far side of the pond was a proper 'road' paved with large flagstones. This path eventually brought us to the crest of Tilla Jogian. The old British rest house built perhaps in the last years of the 19th century was still standing, albeit with a partially collapsed roof. This building was pulled down in late 1985 by some moron politician to be replaced by another structure. Sadly, the only record of this historical building is a rather poor black and white picture I had taken that day.

Until then the only ruined and deserted places Shahid and I had seen were in the pictures. We were excited; our young, ignorant minds not knowing the significance of this wonderfully atmospheric place were filled with all sorts of superstitious rubbish -- at least mine was. Picking our way through a thick clump of vegetation, we startled a herd of cows. The animals stampeded and we with them -- only in opposite directions.

While Shahid investigated the Mughal water tank, I walked over to the group of buildings which I now know as the main monastery. It was spooky: a deserted place, lichen-blackened buildings shaded by gnarled and crooked wild olive and pipal trees and only the sound of the wind soughing through their ancient branches. I went around the main temple building and on the far side, sitting on the plinth of the temple, was a bunch of goats.

If you don't know, ruminating goats have the habit of sort of nodding their heads as their jaws work and perhaps in a way of keeping time, they also go 'Mmmm, mmmm' as they chew, chew, chew the cud. I stood there looking at the goats and they looked right back at me their jaws working, heads nodding until the softly throaty 'mmmm' began to take on a sinister shade. To a foolish, rather superstitious young subaltern the goats were the very demons incarnate that haunt such desolate places. I panicked and hightailed it out of the monastery screaming for Shahid.

In our packs we also had those little parachutes that slowly bring the flares down at night. Used in war to light up the enemy in case of a night attack, the flares are equipped with these little parachutes which we had acquired during some night exercises. We had wanted to sail them down with some stones from the highest point of Tilla. The place we favoured was way to the west. There, by a domed building that looked starkly like the Jinnah's mausoleum (it marks the spot of Baba Guru Nanak's penance), but no higher than our heads was a sheer drop. At the bottom of this drop, there perhaps still lie two parachutes that each softly floated down a stone that November day.

By the Mughal water tank we sat down to eat our Fruit Cocktail. And then we started the return journey. The good subedar (whose name like that of his village I forget) had warned us to be back by three in the afternoon because that was when the last bus departed for Jhelum. We were merrily hopping and skipping back when all of sudden Shahid had to jump behind a bush for a squat. The sound effects were as if his intestine were being blown out. Shortly thereafter I puked into the bushes. From then on, the Fruit Cocktail that we had so enjoyed only an hour or so earlier played hell into us.

We stumbled down, taking turns at depositing our detritus by the wayside. Within no time at all, our bodies, lean and without an inch of fat, were utterly depleted. Soon I had a splitting headache and at one point, with the village in view, as Shahid squatted behind a boulder, I lay down and fell into a deep sleep. I do not know how long I slept but when Shahid shook me awake; I could hear the bus driver blasting away on his horn to tell dallying travellers like us to hurry.

There was no other bus and if we missed this one, we would have to walk all the way back to Jhelum some twenty-five miles away. But Shahid simply could not get me started. Presently he lay down as well and we both slept. After a short snooze which failed to refresh us, we tottered into the village and the home of our host of the previous night. Despite all our protestations about being unwell he rustled up some more parathas and a huge omelette. He insisted that you were bound to be sick when you went up a mountain. What he implied was that travel sickness hit you even when you walked!

No sooner were we done eating that Shahid and I rushed outside. My last bit of bile I deposited in a corner of the yard which was promptly gobbled up by the subedar's dog. Shahid meanwhile had to look for a more secluded spot to do his thing.

The last bus was gone and we were condemned to walk in our feeble state. We set out. Presently night fell and we plodded on through the darkness in the powdery dust of the unpaved road. I felt like death and surely that was how Shahid would have felt as well, but neither of us spoke. At one point we saw shining through the darkness what we know in the army as 'signposts'. An army unit! Godsend, when we thought the last unit had left the area. The sign that would not have meant anything for a civilian told us it was 52 Cavalry of our own 6 Armoured Division. And that was Shahid's course-mate Saeed's regiment.

The sentry on duty guided us to the mess tent and we virtually spilled in. Saeed and Captain Sadiq (who I met some years ago after a gap of twenty-five years) were aghast: what had we been up to? They asked. Soup was quickly brought on, and jugs of water as we narrated our adventure. By then the poisonous cocktail had been fully expelled and we devoured whatever the Mess Havaldar laid out.

Duly revived, we were given a Dodge truck by the good people of 52 Cavalry to be driven to Jhelum. The next day we were both on time for morning PT. For days, even months, afterwards our colleague Irshad Ahmed, the clown of the regiment, sang a little ditty on our adventure. The refrain was about Tilla and killa (stake) and which part of our respective anataaaomies the killa made acquaintance with. Sadly, that song is condemned never to be printable in full.

Postscript: On a recent visit to my regiment (once again in Kharian) the officers asked why I had never mentioned in my writing that I had once done time in the army. I had no excuse. This one, then, is for all the officers and men past and present of 67 (SP) Light Air Defence Regiment. And I hope, for their own good, there are lieutenants who are just sufficiently undisciplined and enough their own men to engage in adventures as we did three decades ago.