Roopkund, Uttarakhand, India (folk tale)

Roopkund: The Skeleton Lake

Folklore — not a documented case

Hundreds of human skeletons lie around a small glacial lake at 5,000 metres in the Himalayas. Legend says they belong to a king's caravan that angered a goddess.

Roopkund is a small glacial lake in India's Uttarakhand state, at about 5,029 metres at the foot of Mount Trishul. Frozen for most of the year, it has the bones of hundreds of people scattered around its shores and on its bed. The remains were noticed by a forest ranger in 1942, making it world-famous as 'Skeleton Lake'.

The stories in this section are folk tales and legends; they are not verified, real events and should not be confused with the rest of the archive.

From the same region