Each artillery salvo was preceded by a cry from the Pakistani gunners: Allahu Akbar, God is Great. Their target lay beyond the surrounding peaks in a neighbouring valley.
With a range of 15 miles, enemy positions in the Indian part of Kashmir were well within reach though accuracy must be difficult, if not impossible, in such terrain. We passed a number of howitzers as our military convoy made its way up the narrow track towards the Pakistani front line.
Occasional reports of artillery fire echoed along the valley and sometimes the distant explosion of an incoming round could be heard. But with the clear blue Kashmiri sky above us and the rush of a mountain torrent below, there was something unreal about the situation.
Indeed, the possibility of pitching over the edge into the deep ravine seemed more likely than obliteration by an artillery shell.
Our sense of vulnerability, however, was enforced when we heard that much of the road ahead was visible to enemy positions at the end of the valley. The convoy of four jeeps broke up so as to present a less solid target. Our driver set off again, hurling his vehicle around the precipitous bends with the indifference of one who had long ago made peace with his maker.
Amid continuing fighting in Kashmir, our trip had been organised by the Pakistani army. "You can go right up to the Line of Control," our group of local and foreign journalists had been told the preceding day. "As long as you're prepared to take the risk, you can go right up to the front. You can see, we have nothing to hide".
Boarding an army helicopter soon after dawn, we flew for three hours, then travelled for another hour by jeep towards this improbable, high-altitude battlefield. Following the course of the slate-grey Shingo River, a tributary of the mighty Indus, we drove through villages and hamlets clinging to the side of the rocky valley.
Some were deserted, their residents having fled the conflict which broke out in May after the Indian army found its positions on the high ridges of the Line of Control had been overrun by infiltrators. In one village, though, a few people remained. A woman in brightly-coloured clothes was hoeing a field while a man turned to watch our passage.
These farmers scratch a precarious living from the soil, growing barley, a few vegetables and fruits at 10,000 feet. A few miles nearer the fighting we found a village where the half dozen families had stayed. Other peasants, displaced by the conflict, had come to live with them. Peering into cramped, windowless huts we found frightened women and children huddling in the gloom.
The road finally came to a halt, revealing a panorama of craggy peaks and tree-clad ridges. The sector commander pointed out Indian fortified trenches, a dark line on the hillside less than a mile away, and a little higher up a mortar position.
Between the Indians and the Pakistanis ran the Line of Control, a de facto frontier drawn up by the United Nations in 1949, two years after the first Indo-Pakistan war over Kashmir.
The location of Kashmir's ceasefire line was ratified by India and Pakistan in 1972 though that has not stopped annual skirmishes ever since. The commander insisted his men had not breached the Line of Control.
Perhaps so, but the Indian government says there is no doubt that Pakistani forces have crossed into Indian territory. What is more, Western leaders, diplomats and military analysts agree with New Delhi. Pakistan says those who have been fighting in the Indian zone are mujahedeen or Kashmiri "freedom fighters".
While not admitting to incursions, Pakistan has now bowed to pressure from the United States, promising to use its "influence" to pull the infiltrators back across the ceasefire line. The mujahedeen might be backed by Pakistan but they have their own agenda. India says it will halt its offensive if there is a withdrawal from its territory. That should solve the immediate problem but the longer-term issues about the province's future have yet to be addressed.
With a combustible mix of religion, politics and history not so very different from Northern Ireland's, Kashmir will remain a flash-point for the forseeable future.
Reuters adds: Pakistan's information minister, Mr Mushahid Hussain, claimed yesterday that India had lost 600 troops in the Kashmir fighting, more than the official figure of 250 for the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war.
Meanwhile Ms Sonia Gandhi, head of India's opposition Congress party, charged the government with "weakness and slackness" in failing to protect the nation's borders.
