Roopkund is a glacial lake located at an altitude of about 5,029 m in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. This place is rightfully called the Lake of Skeletons, as hundreds of human remains were found on its frozen shores.
The lake was found in 1942 by the caretaker of a local nature reserve. The remains were originally thought to belong to Japanese soldiers. Since the find fell on the Second World War, British researchers immediately sent a detachment to study it, as it could have some kind of strategic value. However, after investigation it became clear that the skeletons could not have belonged to Japanese soldiers.
This was followed by the assumption that the bones belonged to General Zorawar Singh of Kashmir and his army, who disappeared without a trace in the Himalayas, returning from the Tibetan battle in 1841. Expertise of the 60s dated the bones to the 7th-8th century AD. Historians began to assume what could have caused the death of so many people … War? Epidemic? Ritual sacrifices?
In 2004, with the support of National Geographic, a group of scientists conducted research, as a result of which it was found that all the victims died from being hit by small, rounded objects. The main injuries were in the head area, which could mean only one thing: death overtook them from above and very unexpectedly.
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For a long time Lake Roopkund was uninhabited, but it was on an important path of the cult of Nanda Devi. People once every 12 years came to him for rituals. Probably, all the victims were pilgrims who fell under a very strange hail.
Coincidence or not, but the folk song of the Himalayan women describes a goddess who was very angry at the people who invaded her mountain abode, and sent a deadly rain on them in the form of stones "hard as iron."