Part of the What Do You Know About That series
by Ruth Orr
ROOPKUND LAKE — You know, I like hiking roughly as much as the next guy. Spending an afternoon outside in the fresh air with great views? As long as the temperature is below 75 and above 25, sign me up. Outside those temperature ranges, leave me to lounge home alone on my couch. I suspect for most folks, they’ve got an upper and lower limit on what they consider acceptable for hiking conditions. Some of you fall more or less into my boat, some of you have better heat tolerance and don’t mind being outside in the peak of summer, and some of you are nutters who like hiking through snow drifts that go up to your waist, but we’re all more or less the same. And then there are those people, those whacky few, who like to take things to the next level.
People who are much more motivated and fit than I will ever be like to go hiking in places like the Himalayas. For those intrepid enough to face the ridiculously high elevations, complete with freezing temperatures, unpredictable weather, and general lack of oxygen, the mountains can be deeply rewarding.
Or they can be death traps.
Picture this. The year is 1942, and World War II is in full swing. Britain has pulled on its territories around the world to help push back the enemy. Tensions are high, and you are an Indian forest ranger tasked with keeping tabs on the high mountain passes. As the world falls apart around you, you climb up into the Himalayas, alone.
Hari Kishan Madhwal was a forest ranger, employed by the Nanda Devi National Park in northern India. He was assigned to collect alpine flowers (which actually sounds like an amazing job) so he climbed up towards the Junargali Pass. When he reached an elevation of 16,470 feet, he came upon Roopkund Lake. As he walked along the edge, he glanced down into the mostly frozen water and saw the stuff of nightmares: the hollow eye sockets of a human skull were staring back up at him.
He dug around in the snow at the edge of the lake and found more bones. Ribs, vertebrae, and limbs. More bones than could belong to any one person, or even a couple of hikers.
In a very understandable panic, he booked it back down the mountain to report in. With the paranoid backdrop of WWII going on, the first thought was that he’d stumbled upon the remains of a failed Japanese invasion, that had tried to cross the Himalayan mountains and sneak into India. However, since the expedition had clearly failed and there was, you know, a whole war going on that required a bunch of attention, the issue of a huge pile of human bodies in a lake got put on the back burner for another 14 years.
In 1956, three teams of archaeologists got the go-ahead to go back up to the site. They made the intelligent choice and headed up into the hills during the summer, when they wouldn’t have to dig through snow and ice. But all that meant was that instead of stumbling across a handful of bodies buried in the snow, they were instead greeted by the sight of an entire valley littered with human remains. Some of the bones still had tattered shreds of clothing and wore leather shoes. Some of them still had hair. It was… gruesome.
Estimates put the number of bodies scattered around and in Roopkund Lake at between 300-800 individuals. It’s hard to put an accurate number on the count however, as the vast majority of the skeletons were disarticulated, or spread out in bits and pieces. Not like somebody chopped them up and threw them around, by the way, just time and avalanches and rock slides and animals coming in and moving stuff.
In addition to the clothing remains, they also found luxury items, including glass and shell beads, the remains of musical instruments, and broken parasols made of bamboo and birch bark.
With the war over, everyone was free to obsess on this grisly alpine lake. Whose bodies are up there? Why were they there? And maybe most importantly of all, what on earth killed them?
That first thought, about the Japanese invasion force, got debunked pretty fast. For one, there were no uniforms, guns, or other modern weapons. Bamboo parasols aren’t usually a part of the standard soldier’s kit. For another, Madwhal spotted the bones during the war, there’s no way that they would have been so thoroughly skeletonized and scattered in such a short period of time. Their frozen environment would have preserved them at least a little longer than that.
Other theories included the idea of it being a trade caravan that had been lost while hooking into the Silk Road connecting Europe and China. There was a thought that perhaps it was a mass burial of plague victims, left far, far away from everyone else. Another idea was that maybe it was a big pile of folks who committed ritualistic suicide together, because why not I guess? Then there were the folks who suggested it was a group of pilgrims, who died while on a pilgrimage route.
The early teams collected bits of body and other stuff left behind and scuttled back down the mountain to run some tests. The science of radiocarbon dating was still fairly new at the time, having been invented in 1946, but they gave it a whirl all the same. What they came up with was a date of about 800 CE, and that’s a pretty accurate timeline.
Those first few studies laid the groundwork for further academic examination. One found that the bones belonged to men, women, and children. Another pointed out that most of the bones showed no signs of trauma. The bodies could be roughly put into two groups, tall and short (not just grownups and kids). The bones that did have trauma were a set of just six skulls that had blunt force trauma to the top of their heads.
So the Japanese invasion has been ruled out. The trade caravan option got kiboshed by the presence of women and kids and the lack of trade goods (there weren’t enough beads or parasols to merit a trade trip) and pack animals.
The plague victim idea was harder to rule out, but it’s still not likely. For one, who is fatally sick and opts to haul themselves to the top of a mountain to die? Or, if you didn’t drag yourself up there, what kind of villagers would have the time or resources to drag their dead or dying loved ones up there? Mass burials for plague victims have been a thing throughout history, but this is awfully remote for something like that. Furthermore, while 1600 years ago is an awful long time, they did have writing back then, and there weren’t any records of mass plagues in the area. For the final nail in the plague’s proverbial coffin, later examination of the bones found that all the individuals were relatively healthy, though they were all kinda malnourished.
So, what about suicide? Yea, probably not. There was a whopping one weapon at the site, a single iron spearhead, and the skeletons didn’t show signs of being violently mangled to death, aside from the handful that had been hit on the top of the head. That doesn’t necessarily mean they hadn’t all taken poison, but there still wasn’t a good explanation for why 800 people would climb all the way up to 16,470 feet and then off themselves and their kids. Not an impossible option, but not overly likely either.
Which leaves leading theory number four— a group of pilgrims met an unfortunate end high up in the mountains while en route to a holy place. This would account for the inclusion of women and children in the party, and would explain the lack of trade goods and beasts of burden. It would explain the lack of weapons at the site. The single strongest bit of evidence that this is in fact what happened is pretty compelling actually— the lake sits on a known pilgrimage route that has been in use for centuries and is still used today.
Wait, what? Yea, Roopkund Lake sits on a well-known pilgrimage route that is made in honor of Nanda Devi. The local mythology and stories say she lives at the top of a nearby mountain with her husband. She is an aspect of the Mother Goddess, and typically gives “bliss” to her followers.
The pilgrimage in her honor takes place once every twelve years, and is very dangerous, cutting along the knife-like ridges of the high mountains. It is a five day hike from Roopkund Lake to the nearest town, all of that in a highly changeable alpine environment where the weather switches up from minute to minute and the rocks slip out from under your feet.
The pilgrims bring with them offerings, including, get this, beads and parasols, the very things found with the skeletons.
Okay, so case closed, right? It was a bunch of pilgrims who died all together in the mountains. Well, not quite. We still haven’t gotten into the details of who they really were, or how they died. For that, friends, you’ll have to come back next week.
