Barren Island: has the only active volcano in South Asia, it was erupted more than 10 times and recently  in 2011. This volcanic island is one of the major tourist attraction of Andaman and Nicobar islands.

Dandakaranya - The Jungle Of Punishment:
                           is a spiritually significant region in India, includes the parts of the Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh states. It is mentioned in the Ramayana and one of the famous Indian Hinduism religious place.

Dhanushkodi - The Lost Island:
                                   is also known as the ghost city and the lost land, located at the tip of Rameswaram island. Dhanushkodi Beach is lies between the junction of the two seas Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean and the only land border between India and Sri Lanka where the remnants of Rama’s Bridge found.

Kalavantin Durg -  Beautiful Abandoned Fort:
                                   is one of the most beautiful abandoned places in India, located between Matheran and Panvel in the Sahyadri mountains of Maharashtra. Kalavantin Durg can be seen from Mumbai Pune expressway and now its a famous trekking place in Maharashtra.

 Kanchenjunga Mountain : Land Of Himalayan Yeti:
                                    is the highest mountain peak in India,located at the border of Nepal and the India in Sikkim. Though its not a strange place to visit but indeed one of the must see place in India along with other four peaks of Great Himalayas, Mysterious Himalayan Yeti can be spotted here.

Sundarbans Delta - The Mangrove Forest:
                                    is the largest mangrove forest in the world and one of the most famous Ramsar sites in India. Sundarbans is a National Park, Tiger Reserve, and a Biosphere Reserve, famous for its man eater tigers.

Red Corridor - A Trail Of Blood:
                                    in India is a region which has Naxalite–Maoist insurgency and suffer from the greatest illiteracy, poverty and overpopulation. Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand are two most affected states of Red corridor.






                                                        SOURCE : INTERNET

Middle School Number 3 :

Following the meltdown of the Chernobyl Power Plant in 1986, the Ukraine government set up the Exclusion Zone, a quarantined area that extends 30 kilometers (19 mi) in every direction from the site of the reactor. Nearly 100,000 residents were evacuated from the Exclusion Zone, leaving behind their possessions, their homes, and, in many cases, their loved ones.Now, most of the Exclusion Zone is still uninhabited, although all of the buildings are still standing. One of those buildings, known simply as Middle School Number Three, is almost frozen in time at the moment of the disaster: Gas masks cover the floors, and chairs and desks still stand exactly as they would have on a school day 27 years ago, except for a few that were knocked out of the way as the students fled. If you want, you can actually visit the area right now with a guided tour, although this tour has certain rules you don’t normally hear on vacation—like stay on the concrete walkways, because the radiation is lower there, and don’t touch literally anything.

Hotel Castello Della Castelluccia Rome, Italy

One of the most world’s most ancient cities, more blood has spilled on the soil of Rome than nearly anywhere else on earth. The Castello della Castelluccia, a renovated 11th century castle described by some guests as something out of a fairytale, has experienced its fair share of that history, changing hands many times and serving as the home to many aristocratic families, including this Orsinis, the Mutis, the Odelskanis, and operatic tenor Francesco Marconi. But this legacy has left its shadows; it is said to be haunted by three ghosts, possibly including the mad Emperor Nero who wanders through the gardens, and guests have reported seeing spectral horses passing by in the night.

THE FIRE GIRL:
On November 19, 1995 Wem Town Hall in England caught on fire. The fire raged on all through the night until the building was nothing but rubble. As firefighters battled the flames, a local citizen, Tony O’Rahilly, decided to snap some pictures of the event. In one of his photographs there appears to be the clear image of a little girl standing in front of the inferno.

At the turn of the 20th century, Waverly was a state-of-the-art tuberculosis treatment facility. In the 1960s it became a mental institution, but was shut down years later due to rampant reports of patient abuse. One of the most famous features of this sadistic madhouse, was the "Body Chute" or "Death Tunnel" — a railcar system for transporting corpses from the top of the hill to the bottom. It is said to be haunted by the psychotic ghosts of 65,000 patients who died at the hospital. There are hundreds of unique horror stories that range from forced lobotomies to forced abortions. Records show some doctors who sexually abused female patients would sometimes fake the women's suicides. If you really want to test the theory of whether ghosts exist or not, the Asylum accepts visitors — but be warned, there is no electricity in the tunnel …

No one knew they were dead for months 

                            Sep 15, 2002

They were missing for months, yet nobody took notice. Till, Mohammed Sajid, a burglar nabbed by the Shahinayatgunj police, mentioned a break-in he had committed some months ago.

Jayaprada, a 56-year-old woman, and her two daughters lived in a two-storey house in Kundanbagh. Neighbours said they last saw the three sometime in June.

Thereafter, they simply vanished. Truth is, all three had died. The police on Saturday recovered their badly decomposed bodies from their house. A bottle of black liquid — presumably poison — was recovered from the room where the bodies were found.
The front door of the house was locked from inside, but a side entrance was not padlocked.
A heap of newspapers from June 21 lay strewn on the verandah near the front gate.
"As poisoning was the apparent cause of death and the temperature was not particularly high, the putrefication took longer than normal. The neighbours never got the smell of rotting flesh," an investigating officer said. The bodies have been sent for autopsy and the liquid is being analysed at a lab.
The rooms had been ransacked and clothes were piled next to the bodies. The almirahs were open and cheque books and documents were dumped on the floor. "It is possible a burglar had entered the house. He saw the three dead women on the bed. He didn't alert the police and came back repeatedly to take away the loot," he said.
Shocked neighbours said the inhabitants of the house were "queer" people. "They would light candles at midnight and walk around the house. The mother would weild an axe and scare away people. They even hung bottles filled with blood on their verandah," one of them said.
"Some students of a nearby college had filed a complaint against this family some two years ago," assistant commissioner of police P Rama Rao said. It is probable that the strange ways of the Jayaprada family kept area residents from making inquiries about their whereabouts. Jayaprada was a native of West Godavari district and was a divorcee.

Thanks  :

Researchers at Stanford University have posited that the skeleton belonged to a human girl between 6 and 8 years old, but scientists have not been able to explain the odd proportions and apparent birth defects, including an elongated skull. 

The skeleton has just 10 ribs, whereas a normal human has 12. 

The truth is out there.
After years of analysis, scientists remain puzzled about the origin of a remarkable 6-inch skeleton found in Chile’s Atacama Desert nearly a decade ago, and DNA tests have only heightened the mystery.
The tiny skeleton has an elongated skull that seems plucked from a Hollywood costume department for a film on alien invaders. That remarkable feature caused many people to conclude that the mummified specimen was an extraterrestrial, but DNA testing conducted by researchers at Stanford University suggests the skeleton belonged to a human girl who was approximately 6 to 8 years old.

 

 

As to the misshapen skull, researchers say that DNA analysis turned up birth defects that could, in part, help explain the deformity.

Nine percent of the skeleton’s genes did not match up with a reference human genome.

"While the jury is out regarding the mutations that cause the deformity, and there is a real discrepancy in how we account for the apparent age of the bones … every nucleotide I've been able to look at is human," Garry Nolan, professor of microbiology and immunology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, told LiveScience. "I've only scratched the surface in the analysis. But there is nothing that jumps out so far as to scream 'nonhuman.'"
The minuscule growth rate is just one of the oddities surrounding the skeleton. The specimen, for example, has just 10 ribs, whereas a healthy human has 12, LiveScience reported, and 9% of the skeleton’s genes did not match up with a reference human genome.

The genetic anomaly could be explained by various factors, including degraded testing samples, and the skeleton’s DNA suggested that it belonged to a female human who came from the coast of South America.
There is, however, skepticism in the scientific community as to whether known genetic defects can really explain the proportions of the skeleton’s head and body. None of the mutations associated with primordial dwarfism, for instance, were discovered through DNA analysis.
"There is no known form of dwarfism that accounts for all of the anomalies seen in this specimen," Ralph Lachman, a professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Medicine, wrote in a report on the skeleton.

A Mill  Named "Mukesh Mills" Shut down in 1980, this enormous abandoned mill in Colaba has been the shooting ground for numerous Bollywood films and advertisements.

Deserted and rundown, Mukesh Mills is a ready-made set for horror films and Gothic shows, especially considering the mills are actually considered to be haunted.
 Many directors, actors and producers refuse to work here past sunset.

One television actress claimed to have had a particularly bad experience when one of her female co-stars suddenly began speaking in a manly voice, as if she were possessed, telling the crew to leave the premises immediately.Others say this haunted Mumbai area is jinxed and people are always losing their belongings, wallets and phones.

Mukesh Mills will soon be demolished and replaced by a new high-rise residential and commercial complex and a five-star hotel.

Grand Paradi Towers, Mumbai is the most famous haunted building in Mumbai. It is located in one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods. The eighth floor of the Grand Paradi Towers in Kemps Corner is the site of several freakish suicides or a gruesome pattern of deaths and accidents. An elderly couple leaped out of their apartment window in 2004. Their children and grandchild followed suit within the next year. There have been at least twenty cases of fatal accidents and suicides since the building was construted in 1976. 

Many of these accidents have involved children, and once a maid jumped or fell out of one of the windows.The family who owned the building began to believe paranormal forces were at work. They decided to do a puja and a havan and ever since then the activity stopped—but the apartment remains unoccupied

 Image(Below): Mussoorie

The Lambi Dehar mines are situated on the outskirts of Mussoorie. These used to be strip mines, lime quarries that have been shut.
In the early 1990s there were about 50,000 workers working in these mines and a lot of these people were dying of diseases.
Lime turns your lungs into stone and you die a very painful death, coughing blood etc.
The mines were shut because a lot of safety rules were being flouted and there were a lot of accidents like trucks falling off the mountains etc?
Today there is an entire city of 1500 people that has been deserted for 20 years.
Trees have grown in the houses and you can hear sounds of people hear at night. It is also very scary perhaps because it is remote, far from civilisation and has its history of haunting.
When you're driving there, cars go off the road, trucks go off the road, and there's been a mysterious helicopter crash there. So there's definitely a presence in that place.
Legend has it that there's also a witch that walks down the mountains screaming.

 Some call Athens, Ohio one of the most haunted places in the State due to numerous accounts of haunting in that region. But one place, in particular, is known by many to have been very haunted: The Ridges, formerly tuberculosis ward for the mentally ill (Athens Lunatic Asylum).

                       In early 2013, the tuberculosis ward was razed due to it remaining unoccupied and being a target for vagrants, vandals and paranormal explorers who frequently trespassed to get a look inside. The building had remained as the only lunatic asylum building left on the campus of Ohio University that had not been repurposed as part of the college campus.
                      
                      Beginning right after the Civil War in the mid to late 1800s, many mental asylums began popping up across the United States. They were typically constructed in a Kirkbride-style or “cottage style” (the former Massillon State Hospital is another example) of separate buildings situated together on many acres of property, sometimes interconnected, and beautiful. The movement to treat the mentally insane or troubled humanely inspired this type of mental hospital. There was also a rise in soldiers needing help after stress associated with the great Civil War.At the Athens Lunatic Asylum, over time, people began filling the buildings with not only the mentally ill but the elderly. This led to eventual overcrowding, and the conditions deteriorated. Treatments also changed and included such torturous procedures as lobotomies, ice water treatment and shock therapy. None of these “treatments” could be considered pleasant and were really forms of torture. Decades later, eventually, drug treatments would replace these outdated methods in the 1960s. The mental hospital changed names many times over the past century, suffered several fires, countless deaths, much torment and even cared for tuberculosis patients. By 1993, the hospital closed, sitting vacant until Ohio University purchased it a few years later, restoring and renovating all of the buildings on the grounds except one: the tuberculosis ward. 

 

Imprint of the dead body of Margaret Schilling who was accidentally left locked in one of the buildings after it was locked up and abandoned. Her imprint reappeared after her decomposing body was discovered and removed.

The tuberculosis ward has long been considered haunted by many, especially college students who have frequented it over the years. Given its history of suffering and death, the energy left with the building certainly couldn’t have been good; and if a place on the Ohio University campus were to be haunted, the tuberculosis ward definitely had the back story. But we have to ask one question: What about all of the other buildings that still exist from the asylum? Are they haunted, too? We will be looking for reports…




A peek inside the haunted tuberculosis ward. Near the end of the video recorded at Ohio University, there is something that moves, and it looks sort of like a face. Watch carefully and decide if this is evidence of the building once being haunted by ghosts.(Watch The Video Below)

Netaji Subash Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army (INA) and struggled for the independence of India from colonial rule.
There is a large body of work documenting his life as a leader of the INA and his contribution towards the freedom of India from British colonial rule.  However, his disappearance towards the end of the World War II remains one of the enduring mysteries of the 20th century for people of India and the world.



Did ‘Netaji’ die in a plane crash in Taiwan on August 18, 1945? The question is once again back to haunt historians and Netaji’s numerous followers alike after the Allahabad High Court’s order directing the government to take a fresh look into the matter.And order comes in a case filed 27 years ago to ascertain whether one mysterious ‘Gumnaami Baba’ who lived in Faizabad for several years was actually Netaji himself.
According to some books, Netaji, founder of the Indian National Army (INA) and one of the leading lights of the Indian independence movement, died in a plane crash in Japan in August 1945. the ashes of netaji are kept in Tokyo’s Renkoji temple. But the mystery surrounding his death is yet to be solved.
“The personal articles, documents and photographs recovered from his room after his death (on September 18, 1985) clearly show that Gumnaami Baba was indeed Netaji. But it is unfortunate that no one has probed the matter seriously enough to reveal this truth,” says Shakti Singh, president of the Subhash Chandra Bose Rahstriya Vichar Manch, who is a petitioner in the case and has written a book on the Baba.
Three inquiry commissions have probed Netaji’s mysterious death but their reports have thrown up more questions than they answered. The last probe panel under Justice MK Mukherji had concluded that Bose did not die in the plane crash.
The Allahabad High Court’s has now ordered an inquiry to ascertain whether Faizabad’s late Gumnaami Baba alias Bhagwan ji was really Netaji. The court noted that the Baba was “not an ordinary person”, and that “family members of Netaji, friends and relatives from Kolkata had been regular visitors.”
The court chided the Centre for not conducting a DNA test on the ashes at Renkoji Temple (Tokyo). The court has directed the state government to establish a museum to preserve Baba’s belongings.

The Gumnaami Baba is reported to have come to Faizabad sometime in the 1970s and was first reported to the police by a local in 1977 for his “suspicious” activities. Very few people saw him as he did not meet anyone except for the few he trusted. Also, there is not a single picture of the Baba.
Shakti Singh points out that Netaji’s niece Lalita Bose, who filed the first petition after his death, used to visit him as did his other close friends and relatives. Lila Rai of the INA also came to meet him, he says.
Netaji’s personal physician Dr PC Bannerji and his trusted domestic help Saraswati told people before they died that the Baba was indeed Netaji. However, the Mukherji commission which briefly looked into the Gumnaami Baba episode did not attach much importance to these things.

 

The Fly Geyser, near Gerlach, Nevada, is strange because it somehow grows up. It is three meters high at the moment. It is interesting that this geyser is located on private area, so nobody can enjoy it from close. The owner is Bill Spoo, a man who rejects the opportunity to make a fortune from the tourists, and keeps the beautiful view just for himself and the few researchers and photographers who have to schedule a visit weeks before arriving.

Mount Roraima is located on the triple border point between Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. It is weird because of its shape, but is also mysterious because of the clouds that are always near the peak and the endemic fauna. The tabletop of the mountain, which is the peak actually, is considered as one of the world’s oldest geological formations. It is believed that the plateau was formed by water and winds, but the reason why some species can’t be found anywhere else remain mystery.

Located in the Kara-Kum desert of Turkmenistan is the village of Darvaza (Derweze) near to where, in 1971, a team of Soviet prospectors allegedly drilled into a large chamber filled with natural gas. The roof of the cavern collapsed leaving a crater-like sinkhole some 25 metres deep with a diameter of approximately 60 - 70 metres. It soon became evident that natural gas was still rising into the crater from even deeper sources and the story goes that the decision was made to ignite the emissions rather than risk either a concentrated build-up of gas or local poisoning. According to various sources it has burned continuously since then and has apparently been named “The Gate to Hell” by the local people. However, another source that spoke with the guides from the region claims that it is a wholly natural phenomenon.

Found on both land and in the ocean throughout the Bahamas and the national waters of Belize are deep circular cavities known as Blue Holes which are often the entrances to cave networks, some of them up to 14 kilometres in length. Divers have reported a vast number of aquatic creatures some of which are still new to science. In addition, they’ve recorded chambers filled with stalactites and stalagmites which only form in dry caves. For the explorers this was proof that at one time, nearly 65,000 years ago, when the world was in the grip of the last major ice age, the sea level of the Bahamas was up to 150 metres lower than it is today. Over time the limestone of the islands was eroded by water and vast cave networks created. When sea levels rose again about 10,000 years ago some of these collapsed inwards and the Blue Holes were formed.

Shaniwarwada Fort of Pune in India is one of the most haunted historical places of India and contains a nerve chilling story within it's walls. This is the place where the 13 year-old Peshwa Dynasty heir Narayan was brutally assasinated.

As his assassins chased him all across the fort, the boy yelled, again and again "Kaka, mala vachva!" (Uncle, save me!) and even today locals say that they hear his cries for help at midnight on every new moon day.

Raj Kiran Hotel, Lonavala in Mumbai, India is not a big hotel but is haunted for sure, confirmed by a number of Paranormal experts, that one

There is a particular room on the ground floor of this hotel, where guests have reported their bed sheets had been pulled off while they slept. Some have woken up in the middle of the night with blue light at their feet.

The room, however, has now been stopped being rented out.

Enclosed by 752square kms of incredibly scenery, the Bemaraha National Park, situated in the west of Madagascar, was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990, and is home to the truly amazing stone forest known as the Tsingy.

From the Malagasy word “mitsingitsignia”, which means ‘to walk on tiptoe’, the term has been accepted in common language to denote the exceptional topography of eroded limestone, which may exist in other parts of the world, but nowhere as tall, slender and extensive as the spires here. An extraordinary world of forest canyons, humid caves and unique fauna and flora thriving in close proximity to one another.



The national park centers on two geological formations: the Great Tsingy and the Little Tsingy. Together with the adjacent Tsingy de Bemaraha Strict Nature Reserve, the National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Tsingys are karstic plateaus in which groundwater has undercut the elevated uplands, and has gouged caverns and fissures into the limestone.

Because of local conditions, the erosion is patterned vertically as well as horizontally. In several regions on western Madagascar, centering on this National Park and adjacent Nature Reserve, the superposition of vertical and horizontal erosion patterns has created dramatic “forests” of limestone needles.

Tsingy can be translated into English as where one cannot walk barefoot. The unusual geomorphology of the National Park and Nature Reserve, means that the Site is home to an exceptionally large number of endemic species of plants and animals that are found only within extremely small niches in this place. For example, the summits, slopes, and bases of limestone needle form different ecosystems with different species clinging to their exceptionally steep slopes.



The formation of these unusual rocks actually began some 200 million years ago when layers of calcite accumulated at the bottom of a Jurassic lagoon, forming a thick limestone bed.  Later tectonic activity elevated the limestone, and as sea level fell during the Pleistocene ice ages, even more of the limestone was exposed.  Eventually, the ancient sediments were carved by monsoon rains, finally creating what we see today.

These are the most unusual and beautiful geological sites that you might ever come across. Not easy to get around, but stunning both in terms of their inherent natural attraction and the fabulous wildlife that exists here.  It may not seem a perfect tourist destination, but you can be sure that if you ever do chance to actually see it in the flesh, as it were, you will want to go there again.
 

Roopkund is a beautiful clear water Himalayan lake, located in the lap of Chamoli district of Uttarakhand state India. The starting point of the Roop kund is Debal. A picturesque lake is surrounded by snow covered majestic Himalayan peaks and glaciers

This high altitude lake (4600m) lies in the lap of Trishul massif. A shallow lake, Roopkund has attracted attention by having human skeletal remains easily visible at its bottom. It is the highest peak, situated in Chamoli district of Garhwal. It is standing at 7802 meters; the peak finds its home in the state. The scene of countless pilgrimages, this brand new state has its roots steeped in the spiritual heritage of this great land.

The various sources of the Ganges Yamunoti, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath is the bernoth that draws devotees by the hordes. Here the tourist is replaced by the devout the young, the old, the fit and the infirm, all find their way here battling biting cold, high altitude sickness. Finding penance perchance in this hardship as the Gods almost seem to be close enough to touch. The mountains have many escapades to offer Valley of Flowers, the sacred Roop Kund and Dodital lakes, Milam glacier and Kuari Pass each of these have a distinct flavor – Rolling Meadows to killer ascents.

What happens when ice melts in the Roopkund lake?
When ice melts in the glacial tarn of Roopkund, located 5,000 metres above sea level in Chamoli district, Uttaranchal, hundreds of corpses can be seen floating. Thus gets exposed a mystery that dates back to more than 60 years and has begun to be understood only recently.
In 1942, a forest guard chanced upon hundreds of skeletons at this tarn.


The remains have intrigued anthropologists, scientists, historians and the local people ever since. Who were these people? What were they doing in the inhospitable regions of the Garhwal Himalaya?
Many speculated, initially, that the remains were those of Japanese soldiers who had sneaked into the area, and had then perished to the ravages of the inhospitable terrain.
Those were World War II times and even the slightest mention of a Japanese invasion was bound to throw the area’s British administrators into the tizzy.
The matter was investigated and the speculation was put to rest: the corpses were said to date back to at least a century. But nobody knew when exactly. Some British explorers to Roopkund, and many scholars attribute the bones to General Zorawar Singh of Kashmir, and his men, who are said to have lost their way and perished in the high Himalayas, on their return journey after the Battle of Tibet in 1841.
But radio-carbon tests on the corpses in the 1960s belied this theory. The tests vaguely indicated that the skeletons could date back to anytime between the 12th and 15th centuries ad. This led many historians to link the corpses to an unsuccessful attack by Mohammad Tughlak on the Garhwal Himalaya. Still others believed that the remains were of those of victims of an unknown epidemic. Some anthropologists also put forward a theory of ritual suicide.
Local folklore has it that in medieval times, king Jasdhawal of Kanauj wanted to celebrate the birth of an heir by undertaking a pilgrimage to the Nanda-Devi mountains in the Garhwal Himalaya. However, he disregarded the rules of pilgrimage by boisterous singing and dancing. The entourage earned the wrath of the local deity, Latu. They were caught in a terrible hailstorm and were thrown into the Roopkund lake.

Folklore is not all myth
Now the first forensic investigation of the frozen corpses has concurred with the hailstorm theory. Scientists commissioned by the National Geographic television channel to examine the corpses believe that they died from sharp blows to their skulls. “We retrieved a number of skulls which showed short, deep cracks,” said Subhash Walimbe, a physical anthropologist at the Deccan college, Pune. Walimbe was a member of the team that visited the site.
“The cracks were caused not by a landslide or an avalanche but by blunt, round objects about the size of cricket balls,” he surmised. According to Walimbe, “The only plausible explanation for so many people sustaining such similar injuries at the same time is something that fell from the sky. The injuries were all to the top of the skull and not to other bones in the body, so they must have come from above. Our view is that death was caused by extremely large hailstones”. Another member of the team, Wolfgang Sax, an anthropologist at Heidelberg University in Germany, cited a traditional song among Himalayan women that describes a goddess so enraged at outsiders who defiled her mountain sanctuary that she rained death upon them by flinging hailstones “hard as iron”.
“We were amazed by what we found,” said Pramod Joglekar, a bio-archaeologist at Deccan College, Pune. “In addition to skeletons, we discovered bodies with the flesh intact, perfectly preserved in the icy ground. We could see their hair and nails as well as pieces of clothing,” he said. The scientists found glass bangles, indicating the presence of women.
The team also found a ring, spear, leather shoes and bamboo staves. This has led them to hypothesize that the corpses were those of pilgrims. The scientists estimate that as many as 600 bodies may still be buried in snow and ice by the lake.

Pilgrims perish
The samples were sent to the Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit of Oxford University, uk where the date of death was established at about 850 ad. The team has yet to resolve the identity of the victims, though.
Meanwhile, scientists at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad have also undertaken tests on skeletal remains. Lalji Singh, the director of the centre, said that his institute had conducted studies on the dna of 31 samples of bone and muscle taken out from the remains. “Three samples have unique mutations in the mitochondrial DNA which are not found anywhere in the world but only in a particular group of people from Maharashtra,” he said. Singh, however, refused to mention the ethnic group. He said analysis of two other samples matched with some people living in Garhwal even as further studies on all the 31 samples were still on to find out more accurate facts. D K Bhattacharya of the National Geographic team agrees: “Only a few have the characteristics of the Mongoloid hill people of the Himalaya,” noted this scholar from the University of Delhi. It’s quite possible that the pilgrims employed these local people as porters. After all, Roopkund is almost 35 km away from the nearest human settlement and it’s virtually impossible for outsiders to venture into the area without taking the help of local people.
Need protection
It is quite unfortunate that the local administration has made no organised attempt to protect this site. Skeletal remains and other articles of those who perished ages back are reported to have been diminishing fast from here. Lack of administrative will and a general indifference has denied this destination its due place on the international tourist map. In the ceaseless efforts to win over nature sometime we emerge as victorious though losing the battle is also an integral part of the game. The Roopkund remains an indicator of the latter.