For most Indians, the word Kargil evokes the memory of the 1999 Indo-Pak war—a landscape defined by conflict, broadcast through television screens in grainy, urgent footage. But for its natives, Kargil is home: a place of culture and memory that deserves to be understood on its own terms. Stories from a Kargili Kitchen by Yash Saxena is an honest attempt to look at Kargil beyond what lives in popular imagination. The author, whose background is in food writing and cultural research, tells the stories of Kargil’s people through the lens of what they eat. Written in collaboration with Roots Ladakh — a local responsible travel organisation founded by Muzammil Hussain and Tafazzul Hussain, with research and anthropological rigour supplied by Sneha Nair, whose “Notes on Research” section grounds the book’s methodology— the work is the result of a three-and-a-half-year journey through the district’s villages and kitchens.…