00:05Nestled in the Himalayan mountains, in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, on the border between
00:11Nepal and China, at more than 5,000 meters above sea level, there is Rob Kund Lake, a lake
00:17Beautiful,
00:18or rather, that it would be beautiful if it weren't for one particular detail. Discovering it for the first time
00:24once it was a British Army Ranger, Harry Kistan Madwall, who in 1942 had gone
00:32scouting up to that desolate area and that tiny lake, 40 meters in diameter and 3
00:38meters deep. Usually the pond is covered by a blue sheet of ice and its banks are
00:45white under the snow cover of the mountains, but summer, for one month a year, no, the month was
00:52that. And so Ranger Harry saw that the pond is a beautiful green and he also
00:58I was able to notice that very strange and very disturbing detail. Skeletons. Human skeletons covering
01:05the shores and the bottom of the lake. Many, many, more than 300. And in fact this is how it is now
01:12called that place, Skeleton Lake. But who are they? What are they doing there? What happened to them? In
01:20Over the centuries, many hypotheses have been formed. The first, the most accredited for a long time,
01:27It was a revenge of the goddess Nanda Devi. It happened in the 9th century, when the king of
01:33Cannavi ascends to the mountain sanctuary with a procession of musicians and dancers. But everything
01:39The goddess doesn't like that noise. So she bombards them with a hailstorm that kills them all.
01:45All right. Moving away from the myth a bit, there are other explanations that have to do with the fact
01:52that the remote lake was a place of pilgrimage. An atmospheric event of more meteorological origin
01:58that divine, like a storm or an avalanche, or a series of human sacrifices or an epidemic.
02:06But then science arrives, which in this case, instead of solving the mystery, complicates it even more.
02:12more. A DNA study of 38 skeletons states that they belong to three different groups,
02:20arrived on the lake at different times. One of Asian origin between 600 and 900 AD, another
02:27came
02:28from the Eastern Mediterranean between 1600 and 1900 and another, smaller one, arrived from Asia
02:35Eastern. There are no traces of bacteria that justify an epidemic and it is not possible to
02:41understand what all those people died of. And so the mystery remains. And that remains too.
02:48beautiful lake, nestled between the mountains, blue in winter and green in summer, with its
02:54silent skeletons, which will surely be disturbing, yes, but for someone they make it
03:01even more fascinating.
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