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India is investing billions of dollars into the construction of a massive barrier stretching across key regions of the country. Officials describe it as a strategic infrastructure and security project, but the scale and cost have sparked intense debate. As the structure rises, many are asking the same question: what future threat is India preparing for?
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00:00We all know about the Great Wall of China, but what about a massive Indian wall that
00:05was created from thorny shrubs and brushwood? This wall ran through the heart of India.
00:10It was smaller than the famous Chinese wall, but still extremely long and impressive.
00:14Why did we hear nothing about it, and why did it disappear? Let's figure it out.
00:21So, it all began in the 19th century. The British Empire decided to create a large
00:26barrier along a customs line right in the heart of India. This line stretched from the state of
00:32Punjab in the northwest to Madhya Pradesh. But what was the problem with this line?
00:37In India, salt was one of the most expensive products in the country, and the tax on it was
00:43very high. People didn't want to pay these taxes, so many smugglers transported salt from coastal areas
00:49to central regions. As a result, salt lost its value, and Britain incurred significant financial losses.
00:56That's why the idea of creating a living hedge to stop smuggling appeared.
01:01The point was not to waste time and effort building a stone wall, but instead to create a barrier made
01:07of
01:07trees, plants, and dense thorny shrubs. A barrier that could grow on its own. The idea of building a
01:15living hedge only seems simple. In reality, the builders faced enormous difficulties.
01:21At first, it was built mainly from dry branches that were brought in and piled into tall heaps,
01:26but such a wall quickly fell apart and the branches had to be replaced again and again.
01:31Then, a government official and botanist named Alan Octavian Hume was appointed Commissioner of Customs.
01:38He decided to use his knowledge of gardening and botany to strengthen the hedge.
01:42Which trees were better suited for dry soil and which for wetter areas? How could the most resilient
01:49species of shrubs be grown? How to destroy parasites and how to thicken the walls so that
01:54no one could pass through it? Alan Octavian Hume had to solve these and many other questions.
02:00That is why he is credited with the greatest contribution to the creation of this project.
02:06People used various Indian trees and shrubs including dwarf plum trees and bamboo as well as many local
02:13plants. They did not simply pile everything together but focused on planting and cultivation.
02:19Eventually, the length of the hedge exceeded 1,100 miles which is roughly the distance between New York
02:26and Miami. The average height of the barrier was about 8 feet but in some places it reached 12 feet
02:32in
02:32height and 14 feet in width. It was guarded by around 12,000 British soldiers stationed along its entire
02:40length. The cost of maintaining the wall amounted to approximately $220,716 in today's currency.
02:50Of course, this didn't stop the smugglers. Caravans of camels loaded with salt broke through the hedge.
02:56Officers often clashed with locals. The wall was destroyed not only by people but
03:02also by natural disasters. In some areas, trees don't grow because of the hot, dry climate. In other places,
03:09the wall was washed away by floods. In some regions, the soil was simply not fertile enough.
03:15They planted again and again, dug trenches, brought ground from other areas and worked tirelessly
03:20until they found the ideal solution for each climatic zone. To create just one mile of the wall,
03:27builders used about 250 tons of thorny brushwood and other organic material. Each year, people
03:35transported around 100,000 tons of plant matter to reinforce weak sections of the hedge. They used
03:41almost every type of local thorny shrub. In some areas where the soil was especially dry, the trees
03:47couldn't grow. Builders brought in tons of other soil, dug up the top layer and replanted everything.
03:54In addition to this, people faced many problems that interfered with construction. For example,
04:00white ants attacked the hedge and destroyed large sections of the wall. Forest fires burned trees for
04:06many miles and deprived builders of construction material. Storms, hurricanes and whirlwinds tore down
04:12parts of the wall. Builders had to construct large embankments to protect the wall from floods.
04:18One of the most unpleasant challenges was locust invasions. Just imagine millions of flying,
04:24buzzing insects swarming the wall and eating all the vegetation. Parasitic vines grew around the
04:30trees and simply destroyed them. In one area, rats appeared and builders brought in a group of wild
04:36cats to fight the rodents. All the work to build the hedge took about 30 years. When the wall was
04:43completed,
04:44it was divided into about a hundred sections, each guarded by patrol services. Of course,
04:50gaps still remained in the wall. Smugglers broke through it, throwing sacks of salt over the top
04:55or climbing the trees within the wall. Officers constantly clashed with them. After such massive
05:02and exhausting work, the wall was expected to last a very long time. But in 1879, it was no longer
05:09needed.
05:09The salt tacks began to be collected directly at production sites, making smuggling pointless.
05:15Once the wall stopped being maintained, it began to deteriorate and overgrow.
05:20In some places, it was dismantled and used for firewood. In other areas, natural disasters finished
05:26it off. In modern times, it's almost impossible to find the remains of the hedge. Some sections of it
05:32were turned into roads. All the information we know about this fence is stored in the books and
05:37records of various researchers who communicated with local people or were directly involved in the
05:43process. Now, let's learn something about another much more famous wall located in China. This wall
05:51still remains the largest and most extensive structure ever built by humans. Its length is about
05:5713,000 miles, roughly the distance from Alaska to South America. But it's not just a wall along a straight,
06:03flat road. It goes up and down, twists and straightens across mountains and plateaus.
06:10It's no surprise that this massive construction was built over a span of 2,000 years.
06:16The Great Wall of China is divided into many sections and consists of towers, watchpoints, garrison
06:22stations and barracks. All of this was built from bricks and cut stone blocks. To bind them together,
06:28builders used lime mortar. But not every part of the wall consists of structures with towers like
06:34the ones you see in photos and on the internet. In some areas, it's simply massive ridges of compacted
06:40ground. It's hard to imagine how titanic this labor was. All of these construction materials had to be
06:47transported into the mountains. People didn't just stack bricks on top of each other. They leveled the ground,
06:53reinforced the foundation, and built day after day, year after year, generation after generation.
07:01Today, many parts of the Great Wall of China are destroyed. Some elements were ruined by natural
07:07disasters, others by erosion, and many sections were destroyed by people. Some of the damage is
07:13connected to interesting legends. One of them tells the story of Lady Ming Zhang. Her husband was sent to
07:19build the Great Wall of China. For a long time, she received no news from him. So one day, she
07:25decided
07:25to visit him and bring him winter clothes. When she arrived at the wall, she learned that her husband
07:31was no longer alive. Lady Ming Zhang wept bitterly in her grief. According to the legend, her sorrowful
07:38crying caused part of the wall to collapse. Millions of people built the wall over the course of 2000 years.
07:46And this raises a question. Why? What was the point of all this construction? One of the main reasons was
07:53to protect the country from enemies. Essentially, the entire Great Wall of China is a long defensive line.
07:59The wall also helped unite and preserve the unity of fragmented states that eventually formed a single
08:06China. But what purpose does it serve today? It's a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It represents a symbol of
08:13culture, unity, and the history of the country. And from an economic point of view, it attracts
08:19millions of tourists from all over the world. Did you know that India is building a megastructure
08:27visible from space? It's happening in Andhra Pradesh, a region home to 50 million people and some of the
08:34worst climates on Earth. When it rains here, it pours enough to cause massive floods. When it dries,
08:40it turns fertile ground into a wasteland. This ambitious construction is supposed to solve the
08:46issue once and for all. However, if this multi-billion dollar project backfires, the consequences could be
08:53devastating. Let's see why. The second longest river in India is called the Godavari. During the monsoon
09:00season, this river acts like a fire hose that nobody can turn off. We aren't talking about a drizzly
09:05afternoon. From June to September, the sky practically unzips. The water level rises and
09:11the river transforms from a calm stream into a chaotic force that swallows entire villages in days.
09:19But that's not all. A huge amount of that fresh water goes completely to waste. It rushes past the
09:24villages and dumps straight into the Bay of Bengal. Once it hits the salty ocean, it's useless for
09:30drinking or farming. We're talking about billions of gallons of much needed water disappearing into the
09:36sea every single year. Now, on the other hand, we have the Krishna River Basin, just a few hundred
09:42miles away. There, it's literally the opposite issue. Farmers are staring at dry cracks in the ground.
09:49They're praying for rain that never comes. And Krishna does not get strong monsoon support,
09:55and most of its water is already used up before it even reaches this region. By the time it arrives,
10:01it's more like a tired stream than a healthy river. That's why the authorities looked at the map and came
10:07up with a solution. Basically, take the excess water from the angry river and push it over to the dry
10:13river.
10:14This brings us to the Pulavaro. The engineers are building a structure that's a giant machine,
10:20not just a wall. It's built to connect these two massive water systems, like running a giant pipe
10:26from the side that has too much to the side that has almost nothing. The project combines a massive
10:32earth and rock dam with a hydropower plant and a network of canals. However, the most impressive part
10:39of this layout is the spillway. It's a giant complex of concrete, channels, and support systems. It looks
10:47less like a dam and more like a fortress built for titans. It's a gigantic safety valve for the earth.
10:53It stretches for close to a mile across, wider than 10 football fields placed side by side,
10:59and rises several dozen feet above the riverbed. It's fitted with dozens of huge steel gates,
11:06each one weighing hundreds of tons, and built to hold back walls of water until the system decides to let
11:13them go. The spillway is incredibly powerful. It has a discharge of around 5 million CUSICs.
11:20In simple terms, it can blast out millions of cubic feet of water every single second.
11:26That puts it in the same league as the spillway at China's Three Gorges Dam,
11:30one of the most powerful flood control structures on the planet. Engineers designed it to handle what they
11:36call a thousand-year flood. And no, that doesn't mean you need to mark your calendar for the year 3026.
11:43It just means there's a 0.1% chance that a flood this massive will hit the valley in any
11:49given year.
11:50Why are the architects so obsessed with these safety statistics? Because the location leaves no room
11:57for error. The Godavari Delta downstream is home to millions of people. If this project backfires,
12:03the dam breaches or the gates fail during a storm, it wouldn't just be a leak. It would be a
12:10human-made
12:10tsunami. The water meant to save the region would instead wipe it off the map. The construction pace
12:18of the Polovarum project matches this insane scale. In 2019, the workers on this site set a Guinness World
12:25Record. They poured 42,000 cubic yards of concrete in exactly 24 hours. If you loaded
12:33all that concrete into standard mixers, you would fill 4,000 trucks. Line them up bumper to bumper,
12:40and you'd get a traffic jam stretching for 22 miles. Even with that in mind, the project still has a
12:47way
12:47to go. It's so big that it starts to bend its own surroundings. It won't just stop or redirect water.
12:54It might change the air itself. Once the dam is complete, it will hold a reservoir so large that it'll
13:02function like a brand new inland sea. Put that much water under the Indian sun and something obvious
13:08will happen. It'll lift into the air. Day after day, the surface will turn into a giant steam engine
13:15sending moisture upward. Scientists call this a microclimate, but we call it accidental weather control.
13:23By creating a massive body of water, you change the local humidity and temperature.
13:29You're essentially installing a giant humidifier in a region that used to be dry.
13:34This is the part that makes experts nervous. What if they accidentally create a new climate
13:40problem while trying to solve the current one? Once you block a river and create a lake this big,
13:47you start messing with the heat and moisture in the air above. The system meant to control water on the
13:52ground ends up influencing the weather overhead too. Then there is the issue of moving the water.
14:00Picture the state as two giant tanks. One is overflowing and about to burst. The other is dry.
14:07The engineers are trying to connect them with a massive pipe to balance the levels before either
14:12one becomes a disaster. How are they doing this? To pull this off, they're carving out the earth,
14:18digging two massive canals, each stretching more than 100 miles. These aren't simple ditches.
14:25They're artificial rivers carved to ignore the natural layout of the land and go where engineers
14:30tell them to go. In 2022, monsoon floods slammed into the site mid-build. Water forced its way past
14:38temporary barriers and damaged critical leak control work. The crew had to stop, assess the damage,
14:45and start restoring the damaged sections. And the risks aren't just about concrete breaking. The real
14:52cost of this project is human. To build the city of water, you have to remove the real cities of
14:59people.
15:00When the reservoir fills, it will submerge nearly 250 square miles of land. That much water does not make
15:07room for anyone. Close to 200,000 people would have to be relocated. Old forests, tribal lands,
15:15and villages that stood for generations will disappear beneath the surface. This is the price of the project.
15:22So with all this concrete and chaos, when does the ribbon get cut? Here's the twist. This project has been
15:30ongoing since the 1940s, back when the British were still in charge. The foundation stone appeared in 1980.
15:38Real work waited until 2004. It's a rare piece of infrastructure that has outlived conflicts and
15:44economic crashes, yet it's still under construction. Major parts of the main dam are incomplete. The reservoir
15:52cannot be filled to its full height. And key power systems have not been installed. Several resettlement
15:59zones also remain unfinished, which means the final stage of the project is still years away.
16:05Aside from the ambition and the scale, money is also the reason it takes so long. Early plants
16:13estimated about $1.5 billion. Today, the cost has passed $6.5 billion and keeps climbing.
16:21But is it worth the price? Depends on who you ask. For the farmers watching their fields dry out,
16:28the answer is yes. For the families watching their homes get swallowed by the reservoir,
16:32the answer is no. The latest deadline for completion is by the end of this decade,
16:38so there are no more excuses. The Polivarum project is a testament to human ambition.
16:44It's humans looking at Mother Nature and saying,
16:47I think you put that river in the wrong place. Let me fix that for you.
16:51Will it work? And how well? We'll find out soon. Until then, the Godavari will keep flowing and
16:58overflowing while the Krishna will keep shrinking, looking like an abandoned movie set.
17:04Well, here you are on a week-long trek through the Himalayas. You're exhausted. The cold is cutting
17:10through to your bones. And suddenly, you stumble upon a human skeleton near a lake. You look around,
17:16and there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of bones scattered across the ground.
17:22Well, guess what? This really happened in 1942 with an Indian forest official. Since this chilling
17:29discovery, researchers have been trying to figure out how so many people lost their lives in such a
17:35remote, isolated spot. So, what happened up there? We're talking about Rupkun, a lake sitting at over
17:4316,000 feet in the Himalayas. But it's not just known by that name. People also call it Mystery Lake,
17:51or even more bizarrely, the Skeleton Lake. This place is remote. I mean, really remote.
17:57It's not just because it's insanely high up, but also because it's surrounded by snow-covered mountains.
18:03If you're planning to go there, make sure you have some solid hiking shoes. It's a week-long trek
18:09covering more than 30 miles of tough, rugged terrain. Along the way, you'll pass through all
18:15kinds of challenging landscapes. Moss-covered oak forests, misty fields with an eerie vibe,
18:22and, up at the top, snow. The highest point of the trek is a knife-edge ridge called Junar Gali.
18:29Just below that lies Rupkun. The closer you get to the lake, the darker the atmosphere feels. And on the
18:36ground, you can find human skeletons scattered around, belonging to more than 300 people. Along
18:42with them, there were things like wooden artifacts, leather slippers, and rings. Okay, so something
18:49really macabre happened here. But what? Well, we have three main theories. Theory number one,
18:56the local legend. According to this story, a long time ago, a king named Raja Justival went on a
19:03pilgrimage deep into the Himalayas to reach a sacred mountain temple. He brought his pregnant
19:09queen, Rani Bulumpa, along with a group of servants, dancers, and others. While they were up in the
19:15mountains, a massive hailstorm hit, or as the legend goes, an angry deity started hurling iron balls from
19:22the sky. Either way, the storm was brutal, and they had nowhere to take shelter. In the end, they all
19:28lost
19:29their lives near the lake. Theory number two, an escape route. Some say the remains belonged to
19:35Indian soldiers who tried to invade a foreign territory back in 1841, but they were defeated.
19:42Over 70 of them were forced to make their way back home through the Himalayas, and they met a tragic
19:47end
19:48along the way. Theory number three, a mass grave. This theory suggests that some kind of widespread health
19:56issue hit the group. They were all buried there, in isolation, to prevent the disease from spreading.
20:02In this case, Rukkun Lake and its surroundings would basically be a cold, remote cemetery.
20:09Now, do you know what all these theories have in common? They all assume that the skeletons
20:14belonged to a single group of people who died in one catastrophic event. But then science came along,
20:21and things got way, way creepier. In 2019, 28 scientists from institutions in the US,
20:29India, and Germany teamed up for five years to figure out what the heck happened up there.
20:34They studied the remains of 38 individuals, 23 men and 15 women. And right there, we can already toss
20:41out theory number two. That's important because if these people had been soldiers on a military mission,
20:47you would expect most, if not all of them, to be men. Armies in the past were almost entirely male.
20:54But here, there were just too many women for that to make sense. And on top of that,
20:59no signs of combat or military gear were found at all. After a genetic analysis, researchers noticed
21:06that the individuals weren't part of the same family, at least not by blood, like third-degree
21:11relatives or closer. And most importantly, they were mostly healthy. These two facts helped rule
21:18out theory number three. It probably wasn't some kind of highly contagious health problem.
21:23But the most shocking part is that these skeletons didn't belong to just one single group.
21:28They actually came from three distinct groups. The first group had ancestry that falls within the
21:34range of present-day South Asians, basically from the regions that are now India, Pakistan, and Nepal.
21:41The second group had ancestry typical of Eastern Mediterranean, just like people from today's
21:47Greece, or more specifically, from Crete. And they also identified one individual with Southeast Asian
21:54related ancestry. The dating also shows that these remains weren't deposited at the same time. In other
22:00words, groups 1 and 2 didn't live during the same period. Their deaths were actually spread out over as
22:07much as 1,000 years. Oh great! Now theory number one is out the window, too. After all, the studies
22:14can confirm that these people passed away in at least two separate tragic events. According to the
22:20researchers, there is a possible clue about where at least some of the people with South Asian ancestry
22:26might have come from, or why they were even up there in the first place.
22:31Rapkund Lake isn't part of any major trade route or anything like that. But it is along the path of
22:37a pilgrimage called the Nanda Devi Rajjat. It still happens today, once every 12 years, where people
22:44hike through the mountains for worship and celebration. Now the written records of this pilgrimage only show
22:50up around the late 1800s. But there are inscriptions in nearby temples that go way back, like to the 8th
22:57or
22:5710th century. So, it's possible the tradition started much earlier. And maybe some of these people passed
23:04away during one of those early pilgrimages, due to a heavy storm or some other natural disaster.
23:10Okay, but how do we explain the group that came from Greece? Well, that's definitely more puzzling.
23:17First, because there aren't any historical records or evidence to explain who these people were,
23:23or what they were doing in the far reaches of the Himalayas. So, it's hard to know where to start.
23:29The study suggests that they could have been a group of unrelated men and women,
23:33born in the eastern Mediterranean region, around the time the Ottoman Empire controlled that area.
23:39The evidence suggests that they had a diet mostly based on land-based foods,
23:44not the seafood you would expect from people living near the coast. So, they might have lived
23:49inland and somehow ended up in the Himalayas, possibly traveling for reasons that researchers
23:54can't fully explain yet. The best guess is that they were also participating in a pilgrimage.
24:00But honestly, it seems pretty unlikely that people from Europe would have traveled all the way to
24:06Rupkun just to do that. And let's assume they did. What exactly happened to them? I mean,
24:12how did they all pass away in the same exact spot? Well, the researchers can't say for sure. But people
24:19online love to speculate. You think? Some suggest that they fell from the Juna-Garley Ridge,
24:26or since they were at such a high altitude, maybe they passed away due to acute mountain sickness.
24:33Up there, the oxygen levels are much lower, which can lead to things like headaches, vomiting,
24:38and dizziness. The problem is, it can escalate quickly, and if it affects your lungs and brain,
24:44it can become life-threatening. So yeah, it could've happened. But it's still strange to think it
24:50happened to so many people all at once. We definitely still need a lot more answers when
24:56it comes to Rupkun. But one of the obstacles researchers face is that the site remains highly
25:01disturbed and unpreserved. Over the years, trekkers have moved around the skeletons. Or worse,
25:08some have even taken them home as macabre souvenirs. But the more we mess with those remains,
25:14the harder it becomes to find an accurate answer in the future, no matter how much science advances.
25:20So for now, the mystery lake will remain exactly that. A big mystery.
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