
The Skeleton Lake of Roopkund, India - aasarava
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-skeleton-lake-of-roopkund-india
======
gauravk
I was there at the site in 2010. It was an amazing trek
(<http://roopkund.com/>).

Right now, the forest officials are struggling to preserve the remains because
tourist often like to take the skeletons back with them as souvenirs. Since
the lake is far off and frozen for eight months in a year, it is difficult to
guard the area. Most skeletons and bones have been stolen over the years with
only a few skulls and bones remaining around the frozen lake.

~~~
ern
_Right now, the forest officials are struggling to preserve the remains
because tourist often like to take the skeletons back with them as souvenirs._

I that's happening, it is surprising that tourists can pass through customs
with human remains, undetected.

~~~
mansigandhi
It's not like all the tourists in India are from abroad. The majority are
Indians from other states. We travel too, you know.

------
pingou
It doesn't make sense to me, why did the bodies only have wounds on the head
and shoulders ?

It seems intuitive that you protect your head with your hands and arms, as
sudden as the hailstorm may have been, and once they collapsed to the ground
their whole bodies should have been hit (although I guess their clothes could
have protected them a bit) ?

~~~
Ma8ee
My guess is that those are the only wounds that are visible on the bone. On
most of the rest of the body the bones are protected by soft tissue.

~~~
pingou
Maybe but I don’t think there’s that much soft tissue protecting the hands.
Maybe they were stoned, then digged up for some reason?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoning>

That would explain why there wasn’t any survivor able to come back later to
bury her comrades (if you curl you up I’m not sure how a hailstorm could be
lethal to everyone in a big group)

~~~
Ma8ee
I think that it is probably hard to find enough hand bones to piece together
to determine if they have been hit by something big and blunt after this many
years.

------
tn13
Even though this mystery is as good as solved, this mystery death remains
still a mystery

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident>

~~~
Luyt
There exists a Skeptoid episode about this:

<http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4108>

an excerpt:

 _"Here is my proposed explanation of what happened. It's wrong, of course,
because it's done from my armchair 50 years after the fact and with no
firsthand knowledge of the region, but it's completely reasonable and does
adequately satisfy the facts as we know them. Nine skiers set up camp in an
area with potential avalanche danger, but no more or less danger than would
have been found if they set up anywhere else they could have reached before
nightfall. Sometime during the night, a loud noise, either from a nearby
avalanche, a jet aircraft, or military ordnance, convinced at least five
members of the group that an avalanche was bearing down on them. They burst
out of the tent wearing whatever they happened to be sleeping in and ran. At
some point one of them fell and struck his head on a rock. They became lost in
the dark and poor visibility, or simply found themselves stranded with their
injured friend, and finally built a fire. They quickly got hypothermia and
probably shouted themselves hoarse for their friends. Two of them lost
consciousness and the others made a desperation decision: To take what little
clothes their two unconscious buddies had and risk it all to try and make it
back to camp. One made it 300 meters, the second made it 480, and the third a
full 630 meters before all five were dead from hypothermia. Back at camp, the
four who didn't panic and run away in the night got dressed, collected
provisions, and began to search for their friends. They searched for hours,
circling high and low, until at some point either through a slip or just bad
luck, they were caught in a real avalanche. During the resulting turmoil one
received a fatal skull fracture, one received twelve broken ribs, and one bit
her tongue off, all perfectly plausible injuries during such a traumatic
death. Their bodies remained buried until the spring thaw, as is so common
with avalanche victims. At the open-casket funeral for the first five victims,
relatives saw the combination of five days of winter sunburn in those days
before sunscreen, and the mortician's effort to cover up frostbite and a full
month of exposure to the elements, and described it as a strange orange color;
though others described it simply as a deep tan, which is consistent with
reasonable expectations. And who knows what hair would have looked like after
all that exposure and who knows what kind of treatment done by the mortician,
so I can't assign too much significance to what amounts to a few anecdotal
reports from some funeral attendees, and not even all funeral attendees. Plus
I'm quite certain that if UFOs had turned all of their hair really gray, don't
you think the cold war Russian authorities would have had it colored back to
normal for an open casket funeral? Their bodies had been exposed outdoors for
weeks. Of course they looked terrible."_

~~~
ekianjo
Not bad, I can buy that. However, bodies exposed outdoors, in the cold, do not
age that much, especially if they are covered with clothes and so on. Not sure
where the tan would originate from.

------
ekianjo
Can one really die from hail? I have seen pretty big ones now and then, but
usually one would cover their heads with their hands at least, to make it
safely through it.

~~~
jlgreco
9"/23cm hail would do you in pretty quick I would think. Even using my entire
forearms I can only manage to partially cover my whole head. You'd be better
off dropping down into the fetal position but if all the injuries were to the
top of the head then it sounds like they didn't do that (maybe it started too
quickly).

~~~
roel_v
I think the comments to the article draw the correct conclusion - the author
mixed up circumference with diameter, and the hail would have been 'only' 3
inches. Still pretty deadly, but not quite as terrifying as being bombarded
with rock-hard soccer balls.

~~~
ekianjo
Wow, mixing up circumference and diameter is pretty bad journalistic mistake.

------
maaku
Great, now I have one more irrational fear.

~~~
reeses
I'd say a fear of the color blue or clowns is irrational. A fear of
earthquakes, snakes, and huge hailstorms is rational (if extremely unlikely to
occur).

Not to, you know, encourage your imminent agoraphobia.

------
42_huh
Going there next week for the trek :D

But why is this trending on HN?

~~~
narsil
HN tends to be popular in India at this hour.

