For his services in the Gwalior campaign Olpherts received the bronze decoration. Being specially selected by the governor-general, Lord Ellenborough, to raise and command a battery of horse artillery for the Bundelcund legion, he was at once detached with the newly raised battery to join Sir Charles Napier's army in Sindh. His march across India, a distance of 1260 miles, elicited Napier's highest praise. In 1846 Olpherts took part in the operations at Kot Kangra during the first Sikh war, when his conduct attracted the attention of (Sir) Henry Lawrence, and he was appointed to raise a battery of artillery from among the disbanded men of the Sikh army. He was then hurried off to the Deccan in command of a battery of artillery in the service of the Nizam of Hyderabad, but was soon recalled to a similar post in the Gwalior contingent. In 1851 Olpherts applied to be posted to a battery at Peshawur, where he was under the command of Sir Colin Campbell and took part in the expedition against the frontier tribes. For this service he afterwards received the India General Service Medal sanctioned in 1869 for frontier wars. In the following year (1852) Olpherts took furlough to England, and was appointed an orderly officer at the Military College of Addiscombe.