Despite his family's pleas, Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front militants attack an Indian military convoy close to their village.

A few years later, Peer's father is targeted in an attack by Kashmiri militants due to the fact that he is an officer in the Jammu and Kashmir Administrative Service, under a government seen to be run by Delhi.

Another sinister development is the increasing prominence in the conflict of Pakistani-funded militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which carry out suicide attacks in Kashmir, India and even in Pakistan itself against Sufi and Shia mosques.

The book ends in April 2005, with the hopeful resumption of a bus route between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the capitals of the Indian- and Pakistani-administered regions of Kashmir.

[8] The noted historian William Dalrymple, writing in The Guardian said an extraordinary book, a minor masterpiece of autobiography and reportage and called it a "classic account" of the conflict.