Roopkund, also known as Skeleton Lake, is a small glacial lake located at an altitude of about 5029 meters in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Ice covered most of the year.
When the ice melts, hundreds of human skeletons can be seen lying at the water's edge and at the bottom of the reservoir.
The lake was found in 1942 by a forester of a local nature reserve.
The remains were originally thought to belong to Japanese soldiers who infiltrated the area and then died as a result of the "inhospitable" territory. Since the find fell on the Second World War, the British immediately sent a detachment to see if they had stumbled upon some secret passage of the enemy. However, after investigation, it became clear that the skeletons could not have belonged to Japanese soldiers.
Some researchers and scholars have suggested that the bones belong to General Zorawar Singh of Kashmir and his men, who got lost and died in the Himalayas on their way back after the Battle of Tibet in 1841. However, radiocarbon analyzes carried out in the 1960s disproved this theory.
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Analyzes have shown that the skeletons may have lain here between the 12th and 15th centuries. This has led historians to believe that the remains have something to do with the unsuccessful attack on the Himalayas by Muhammad Tughlak.
Yet other scientists believed that the bones belonged to the victims of unknown people who died from the epidemic. Some anthropologists have argued that these are victims of ritual suicide. It was not until 2004, when a team of European and Indian scientists arrived in the area at the initiative of the National Geographic Channel, that the terrible truth of this mystery began to emerge.
DNA research led to the fact that the dead were divided into two categories: some were small, others much taller. And the bodies themselves belonged to a much earlier period of time than previously thought. It turned out that the bones have been here since about 850 AD.
Cracks in the back of their heads indicate that they died from a fatal blow to the head, but this was not a landslide or an avalanche. The blows were delivered with blunt round objects about the size of a cricket ball. The absence of any other wounds on the body indicates that the blow was delivered from above.
Studies of scientists who studied the damage to the bones of the deceased found that the cause of death was a huge hail: hailstones could reach the size of a cricket ball (up to 7 cm in diameter), and people had no chance to escape in open space. Taking into account the avalanches in this area, the number of members of the group could be up to six hundred, some of them may have been carried into the lake.
There is no historical evidence that any trade routes passed through the area, but Lake Roopkund is on an important pilgrimage route for the Nanda Devi cult, and festivals took place about once every 12 years. This group of 500-600 people was most likely pilgrims. They were all from one place and hired a group of porters who knew the way.
Approaching the lake, they most likely went down the slope to get fresh water when clouds hung over their heads. There were no shelters in the Himalayas then, so many, maybe all of them, perished. Due to the thinness of the air and the constant low temperatures in the region, their bodies are so well preserved. Some skeletons even had hair and nails, as well as untouched pieces of clothing.
Perhaps one of the pilgrims escaped this fate, returned to the village and told about it, because there is an interesting legend in the local villages. The folk song of the Himalayan women describes a goddess who was so angry with the people who invaded her mountain abode that she sent down on them a deadly rain from the sky in the form of stones "hard as iron."
Nowadays, this small lake, lost in the Himalayas, has become popular with tourists. The lake itself is located between two majestic peaks: Trisul (7120 m) and Nandghungti (6310 m), and the ascent to it to a height of 5029 meters takes from three to six days. On the route there are waterfalls, mountain meadows, ridges, temples.