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The Mystery of the Skeleton Lake: Roopkund

Roopkund is a mysterious lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains and rock-strewn glaciers. Every year, hundreds of trekkers and pilgrims visit the lake, which is around two meters deep. Pilgrims flock to Roopkund for the Nanda Devi Raj Jat, which takes place once every twelve years and is dedicated to Goddess Nanda.

This lake, easily one of India's top ten mysterious sites, was found in 1942 by a British forest warden patrolling the area. Roopkund is known as the skeleton lake because of the gruesome remains it contains. It is located on one of Uttarakhand's highest mountains. The remains and bones of several people are strewn over the shoreline and even inside the lake, visible when it is not frozen, some with the flesh still attached and preserved.

The remains discovered at the lake, which are said to be a genuinely intriguing spot to visit in India, have been studied for years, yielding results that don't appear to make sense. Except for the fact that some of the bones appear to date back even more, some people believe these are the remains of an Indian king, his wife, and their attendants who died in a blizzard 870 years ago. Others claim that these are Indian soldiers who failed in their attempt to besiege Tibet, while still others claim that this is a mass burial for those who died in a disease outbreak. While its origins are unknown, this is one of India's most fascinating locations that you must visit.

H K Madhwal, an Indian forest official, discovered hundreds of human skeletons in and around Roopkund Lake in 1942. He revealed the strange discovery – a hidden lake where 300 to 800 individuals died tragically – and the human remains were preserved by the freezing Himalayas. The horrific mountain discovery was made public in the late 1950s, generating a lot of curiosity and prompting various studies that are still ongoing. All of this was secondary to the thousands of trekkers who have visited Roopkund in the last decade, drawn mostly by the breathtaking views, various terrain, and difficult route.

The week-long walk starts from gorgeous Himalayan villages that are nothing more than a cluster of traditional huts, five days from the nearest settlement in Uttarakhand state. The trail then winds along large wildflower-laden alpine grasslands, locally known as bugyals, that occur exclusively above the height of 3,300m in the Himalayas, passing through ethereal mist and moss-covered oak woodlands. The Himalayan peaks quickly appear and dominate the horizon for the following few days. Junargali, a knife-edge-like ridge with a 360-degree panorama of the high Himalayas and the rough glacier environment, is the trek's highest point at 5,000 metres.

Roopkund is located 200 metres below the ridge. The perilous, steep climb to Junargali has led to a running joke among trekkers that one bad step might easily add to the mound of bones already in the lake. After recent disclosures, some 80 years after Skeleton Lake originally captivated the world's imagination, that simple joke doesn't seem so far-fetched.

The skeletons were initially supposed to belong to Japanese soldiers or Tibetan traders on the Silk Road who perished of disease or exposure to the weather. After forensic research in 2004, the best assumption was that a group of Indian pilgrims, both men and women, were struck by huge hail at Roopkund in a single occurrence in the 9th century, as determined by perimortem injuries on the skulls.

They were believed to be on the Nanda Devi Raj Jat Yatra, a celebrated Hindu pilgrimage that takes place once every 12 years and is being practised today. Roopkund is en route to Homkund, the end goal of this exhausting trek.They were thought to be on a sacred Hindu pilgrimage that occurs only every 12 years.

The 2004 investigation included Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, a professor of archaeology at Deccan College in Pune. According to her, the team came to the conclusion that the pilgrim theory was the most credible because no weapons were found at the location, indicating that the cause of death was not an attack and that the victims were not troops. They also discovered musical instrument fragments and old folk tales about pilgrims on the Nanda Devi Raj Jat Yatra. The DNA research, according to Mushrif-Tripathy, revealed that it was a male-female group spanning a wide age range, bolstering this notion.

Roopkund, unknowingly driving the growing marketing of the Indian hiking sector, is unexpected. An inexpensive group trek to Roopkund was established in 2009 by a Bengaluru-based company that could be booked online. The IT boom in India had resulted in increased disposable incomes, which coincided with the newly accessible Himalayan mountains, which had previously only been visited by hardy alpine types.