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.