The Lake of The Dead: Roopkund

At a breathtaking altitude of 16,500ft, pristine waters of the Himalayas lay frozen to their depths for most part of the year. Come summer though, the dangerous torrents are unleashed from their icy shackles to reveal a riverbed of bones, flanked by a shore of skeletal remains camouflaged by nude shades of the rugged slope. This is Roopkund or the Skeleton Lake in Uttarakhand, India—straight out of figments of your wildest imagination, into true accounts of history. View of Roopkund from Junargali, some 200 metres above. Photo: Soham Sarkar/Flickr In 1942, an Indian forest official named H K Madhwal stumbled upon a host of skeletons that lay strewn across this lake. Somewhere in the folds of the mighty Trisul, the forest ranger was left aghast by his findings—hundreds of bones and skulls, some with flesh still intact. The nearest settlement was a tedious five-day trek from the area. Where had the bodies come from? How had they been preserved so well? Over the years, some 600 to 800 bodies were discovered. Despite the mythological origins of the glacial tarn, their existence came to be associated with morose theories of logical death. The hypotheses worked like a charm, for hoards of gutsy tourists soon began making their way up to discover the mysteries of the Skeleton Lake for themselves. Photo: vivek shukla/Flickr Stories of the Dead At first, it was believed that the bodies were those of Japanese soldiers who had tried to invade India’s territory. Alternatively, they could have been Tibetan traders passing the Silk Route, who perished under an epidemic. Some believed the location was a cemetery for those who died during a violent hailstorm, supposedly manifested by goddess Nanda Devi. One theory behind this is that these were King Jasidhwal, his wife and their entourage of soldiers and dancers, who were taking a pilgrimage to celebrate the birth of the king’s child.