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A voyage in the desert | VK Saraswat

Making one’s way through the harsh deserts in the Indian subcontinent is no easy task. If the heat doesn’t get to you, your body’s grappling metabolism will.  It often takes the bravest of souls to battle it out in these tough conditions, where your biggest enemy is nature itself.

My tryst with the desert happened several decades ago, when I was entrusted with the task of setting up a Land Range (to test Missiles where the launch Point and impact point of the missile are on land mass and the missile flies largely over land) for testing Prithvi Missile.) in my role as a young Deputy Project Director for Prithvi.

In a country like ours which is densely populated, to identify such a large area with stipulated stringent safety regulations was a difficult task.  The Indian Army has been using certain areas in the desert of Rajasthan, namely, Pokhran, Mahajan etc., to test artillery firing ranges.  After a detailed study of the maps of these regions, we could converge on the existing Firing Range at Pokhran.

The next step was to mark the launch point, impact point and instrumentation stations with a view to maximise the Range without compromising the operational requirements of the Artillery firings and safety of the surrounding civilian population.  A team under the leadership of a Brigadier along with a few of my scientist colleagues embarked on the Mission of the Surveying the Pokhran Range in the month of May.

We landed at Pokhran a day before the scheduled date and went through the topography of various sectors of the Range using high resolution maps – in consultation with the artillery teams who were already using the range for their firing practices.  The artillery teams did not approve the timing of our mission due to severe heat and sand-storms prevalent in this area during the month of May.  However, we decided to start our survey mission as planned.

 At about 0800 Hrs on the scheduled date we commenced our journey from artillery unit to Pokhran Range in two Jonga vehicles.  Army provided us a guide cum navigator who knew the area/terrain well.  Our aim was to enter in Alpha sector and come out at Delta sector covering a distance of more than 60 – 70 km.  We had observed on the map that the highway from Jodhpur to Jaisalmer was running almost abutting the Delta sector.

 The heat was picking up as we moved from place to place in the desert.  By 10 o’clock we started facing sand-storms making our movement difficult.  By 12 o’clock the visibility due to the sand storm was very poor and our navigator was finding it difficult to follow the planned path.

In addition, every team member demanded deviations from the planned route to explore the technical feasibility of other areas based on real terrain conditions.  There was no GPS and 3-D Maps then to accurately plan our course beforehand. The non-availability of GPS also affected our navigation accuracy while proceeding from the Alpha to Delta sector.

By 1400 Hrs, we completely lost the references due to intense dust storms and started hunting for the right route to reach the Delta sector.  We could notice the helplessness of our guide cum navigator in steering us out of this precarious situation.  Our water reserve was also coming down due to excessive consumption and unplanned wanderings in the desert.  Our leader insisted that we should seek local help.

There were no cell phones to establish connection with the base. Our maps didn’t help considering we had no idea about our exact location - in other words we were LOST.

What next ?

Read more in the next part of this blog. Does something bad lead us to see the good side of things sometimes ? Maybe it does ! More on that in Part 2 !

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