Forty-one year old Lobsang Jamphel crossed the Tibetan border to arrive in India in 1988. He joined the Indian Army to quell his early childhood fascination for weapons. "I trained in the Deheradun academy and loved being in the army," he fondly recollects.

Jamphel served as a paratrooper and served in Siachen, the highest battlefield in the world, repeatedly. "It was a very hard life. The climate was unkind and the Pakistanis would always try to engage in a gun battle," he said.

One day, a Pakistani sniper shot him in the thigh while he was scaling a glacier. That day, several other soldiers were injured, "and one soldier lost his life as they shot him in the head," remembers Jamphel.

As Jamphel is a Tibetan, the compensation awarded to him by the government of India was much lower than his fellow soldiers. Jamphel is better known as Lobsang Army in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, where he now lives and works. Jamphel makes a living out of stitching Tibetan prayer flags and printing T-shirts for Tibetan activist groups.

"The hands that have used sophisticated weapons and fought for India are now making prayer flags," he says with a smile and a glint in his eye. – Text and Photos by Dilnaz Boga.

The writer is an Indian journalist and the recipient of Agence France-Presse Kate Webb Prize for her work in Indian-administered Kashmir.