Tiger Hill, designated Point 5060 on military maps, rises west of the Tololing complex in the mountains overlooking the Srinagar-Leh highway. In the winter of 1998-99, elements of Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry crossed the Line of Control and fortified positions along the peak and surrounding ridgeline. From these heights, they could threaten the only road connecting Ladakh to the rest of India. In late May 1999, the 8th Battalion of the Sikh Regiment attempted a direct assault on Tiger Hill but was driven back by heavy small arms fire. Further attacks, poorly coordinated and lacking adequate artillery support, failed against entrenched defenders who held every advantage that altitude and fortification could offer. The attackers dug in and surrounded the hill, waiting for a plan that could succeed where frontal assault had not.

The plan that emerged was audacious. Under the newly assigned 192 Mountain Brigade, three forces would converge on Tiger Hill simultaneously. The 2nd Battalion of the Naga Regiment would advance on the right flank, the 8 Sikh on the left, and 200 men from Alpha and Charlie Companies of 18 Grenadiers, along with their Ghatak commando platoon, would scale the cliff on the rear face, the approach the Pakistanis considered impossible. Before any of them moved, 22 artillery batteries unleashed a bombardment that lasted 13 continuous hours, including multi-barrelled rocket launchers pounding the summit. Under this cover, the assault began on 3 July at 17:15. The Grenadiers climbed through the night in freezing rain, hauling themselves up fixed ropes along a route no one was expected to take. They nearly reached the top before being spotted, and heavy fire stalled their advance.

When the cliff assault stalled, Major Ravinder Singh of 8 Sikh recognized that momentum was slipping away. On the night of 5 July, he led 200 soldiers up the adjoining Western Ridge, splitting the Pakistani defense and holding off multiple counterattacks. Most of the Sikh soldiers fought without cold weather gear, and many of the wounded died from exposure on the mountainside. After three more days of brutal fighting, the pressure from multiple directions broke the defense, and 18 Grenadiers seized the summit on the morning of 8 July. Grenadier Yogendra Singh Yadav, who had been among the first to scale the cliff, was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, India's highest military honor. He had sustained 17 bullet wounds during the battle and continued fighting. The bravery on Tiger Hill was not confined to one side of the Line of Control.

Captain Karnal Sher Khan of the Pakistani Northern Light Infantry defended his positions on Tiger Hill with a tenacity that even his adversaries could not ignore. The Indian Army launched eight separate attacks against his posts. When one position fell to heavy mortar fire, Khan personally led a counterattack and retook it. Despite dwindling ammunition and mounting casualties, he held his ground until machine gun fire killed him on 5 July. What happened next is one of the war's most remarkable episodes. Indian Brigadier M. P. S. Bajwa, struck by Khan's courage, wrote a citation praising the young Pakistani officer and placed it in Khan's pocket before returning his body to Pakistani officials. Khan was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan's highest military honor. NK Satpal Singh, credited with killing Khan, received India's Vir Chakra. The mountain had made enemies of men who, in recognizing each other's valor, briefly transcended the enmity.

Tiger Hill stands today much as it did in the summer of 1999: a wall of rock and ice at the edge of human endurance. The Kargil War Memorial in nearby Dras faces the peak, and the names of the fallen are inscribed on its walls. Visitors who stand at the memorial and look up at the mountain inevitably ask the same question: how did anyone fight a war up there? The answer lies in the accounts of soldiers who climbed vertical cliffs in the dark, who attacked without winter clothing, who kept firing after being hit more times than most people could survive. The battles of Tololing and Tiger Hill, fought in the final weeks before Pakistani withdrawal, became the symbolic victories that defined India's memory of the war. Point 5060 is now quiet, but the stories it produced are not the kind that fade.