HIMALAYAN CHARNEL
Though there were rumours for a millennium
the first officially recorded sighting
of skeletons – at more than sixteen thousand feet
around the glacial, Lake Roopkund
in Uttarukhand’s Chamoli district –
was by a border guard in 1940.
The authorities thought a company
of Japanese soldiers had frozen to death
trying to invade India from the north
via Tibet but the bones were too old.
There were other hypotheses. A large group –
two hundred in total – of pilgrims
and their bearers, heading to the temples
in the forested valleys of the south,
were caught in a hailstorm with no shelter,
hail ‘like cricket balls’ – a simile
befitting a cricketing nation –
that clubbed to death each man, woman and child.
DNA tests show most of the remains
are local, but one is from the East,
possibly Java or Japan, and fourteen
from Crete and Greece – strayed remnants maybe
from the army of Alexander the Great?
The place has become popular with tourist-
trekkers, so much so the authorities
have closed off the whole area. Made
wrong-headed by the altitude, perhaps,
back-packers secreted skulls as souvenirs.
Alex Cox
September 30, 2021Poetic journalism!
Mary Clark
October 1, 2021I never heard of this. A new puzzle. It reminds me of our Donner party. Haunting poetry.
David Selzer
October 1, 2021I’m indebted to a journalist friend in Jakarta, Steve Crewe – who is currently battling lung cancer – for the material which inspired this poem, and a number of others published on the site and to be published. Steve and I were at High School together – some considerable time ago! – and reconnected via my website.
Thank you for reminding me of the Donner party – which also reminds me that I’ve been mulling over a poem about Lewis & Clark for some twenty years!
Ian Craine
October 1, 2021Do we know the possible range of dates for these remains?
David Selzer
October 1, 2021Please see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roopkund#Human_skeletons
I made an aesthetic decision to only suggest the timescale rather than describe it explicitly.
Ashen Venema
October 2, 2021Fascinating.