FOR CENTURIES they have lain there, the skeletal remains of hundreds of humans strewn on a lonely mountainside. For decades their origin has been the stuff of campfire debate among trekkers in northern India.
Now, at last, scientists in Britain and India claim to have solved the mystery.
The skeletons of Roopkund, a glacial lake more than 5,000 metres above sea level in the remote Gahrwal region, were uncovered in 1942. Their discovery sparked intense speculation. Was it a mass suicide? Were these the remains of a royal pilgrimage or a vanquished army? Or perhaps they belonged to a group of Tibetan traders who had lost their way in the rugged mountains?
Among those who wondered about their identity was Nikhil Alva, a keen trekker in his college days and now the chief executive of an Indian independent production company, Miditech. When asked by the National Geographic Channel if he had any ideas for a new forensic investigation series, his first thought was Roopkund.
'A lightbulb lit up in my head,' Alva says. 'It was a subject I'd dreamed of making a film about for so many years.'
The outcome is a television documentary, Skeleton Lake, to be broadcast in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia next week on the National Geographic Channel. It tells of the assembly of a team of top scientists, their groundbreaking research - and their startling conclusion.
