After walking uphill all day through a cloud forest, Nepal's mountain guerrillas finally reach their rest stop at a clearing.

The trail is steep and slippery and it was a pitched battle as the 175-member platoon fought every inch of the way against an invasion of leeches. At the clearing, Comrade Yoddha takes off his socks and peels off a fattened leech from his right foot with his left hand.

"They are like the feudals we are fighting," he says, "both are bloodsuckers." Others in the group don't see it quite in such stark ideological terms. A leech is a nuisance, part of the hardships of a conflict in which they have to be on the move all the time.

The ceasefire means no danger of confrontation for now and even the sentries guarding the clearing are more relaxed than they used to be. But the 'People's Liberation Army' still has to move, and the guerrillas walk up to 20km a day up and down the mountains carrying their arms. They need to move because they depend on the local villages for food and don't want to burden a particular area by staying in one place.

BIBI FUNYAL

GUNS AND LEECHES: Decommissioning of Maoist weapons like these under UN supervision will be one of the items on the agenda of a planned summit between Prachanda and Prime Minister Koirala.

Yoddha (the nom de guerre means 'warrior') is carrying a Belgian belt-ammo Minimi machine gun, one of the few of this type they have captured from the army. The rest of the No 1 Battalion of the Paribartan Memorial Brigade are carrying vintage .303s but in the front row are M-16s, INSAS and SLRs as they conduct a photo-op for the benefit of visiting journalists.

Yoddha is 25-years-old and is from Jumla. He has been with the Maoist army for three years, taking part in some well-known battles like the one in Taulihawa in April where 100 Maoist prisoners were freed. That is where he captured the Minimi, with which he poses proudly wearing the ammunition belt.

"At the moment we are carrying our weapons but not using them," he says, "we are a political force that employs armed struggle as a means. We don't want unnecessary bloodshed."

Yoddha and his comrades are optimistic about the outcome of the peace talks and if it does succeed they'd all like to visit Kathmandu where they have never been.

But even in peacetime, duty calls. It's time for Yoddha to take his sentry shift in a lookout on a nearby corn field.