Roopkund

Roopkund is a small, half-frozen glacial lake at nearly 16,000 ft, and it is famous for the wrong-sounding reason: each summer, as the snow recedes, human skeletons surface along its shore. Genetic study now points to travellers caught and killed by a catastrophic hailstorm many centuries ago — but the mystery, the silence and the altitude give the place an atmosphere no explanation can quite dispel.

The legend is the hook; the walk is the true reward. The trail climbs out of Lohajung and onto Ali and Bedni Bugyal, twin alpine meadows so vast and rolling they feel oceanic, with the trident summit of Trishul and the elegant cone of Nanda Ghunti standing over every camp. Above the meadows the route turns serious — a steep, exposed haul past the Kalu Vinayak shrine to the lake itself, and on to the wind-scoured ridge of Junargali.

This is a high, cold and genuinely demanding trek, and we run it as one. It rewards trekkers who already have a moderate Himalayan route in their legs and who want to test themselves against real altitude, long summit days and the strange, beautiful pull of the skeleton lake.