Mysterious deaths and disappearances in the Indian Valley of the Shadow

Deep in the Himalayas lies one of the most sinister and little-known places of our planet. It's very beautiful, and even deadly, as for many years in this place mysteriously continue to vanish and be lost people.

This part of Himalayas is located on the territory of the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, which literally translates as "snowy province" and is the correct translation. On the local mountains in summer and winter snow. Upstate is a place called Kulaniapia (Kullu), which translates as "the end of the inhabited world", but a few locals often call this place the "Valley of Gods" or the "Valley of shadows" and it is associated with many legends and myths.

So they say that somewhere here the Hindu God Shiva once meditated for 1100 years. These legends and stunning natural beauty has long lured to his adventurers from all over the world, and in recent years there very active booming eco-tourism. Someone comes here in search of a mysterious land of Shangri-La (a fictional name from a book by the science fiction writer James Hilton), which is a allegory to Shambhala. Someone looking for a challenging mountain peaks that wants to climb. Someone else is trying to find himself immersed in the mystical spiritual practices. That's just not everyone of them is destined to come back.

Only in the last ten years, then mysteriously disappeared more than two dozen foreigners. Some of them were later found dead but the cause of their death was impossible to figure out. Others disappeared forever. We can assume that all these foreigners have suffered from local crime, only criminal tracks in none of the cases was found. Besides, this whole area has long been working on tourists and not beneficial to anyone, to tourists who were killed and they were afraid to go here.

One of the most famous was the disappearance in 1996, 21-year-old student at the University of Bristol Ian Mogford. He disappeared after visiting the local temple, and when his friends went looking for him, then mysteriously it turned out that his name is not even noted in the guest book in the house where he was staying. Although he had no doubt there was.

In the same 1996, as weird missing 32-year-old Italian of Alexander Verdi. She disappeared right out of the house, which is rented and the house was found only a few small spots of blood. Later her dead body was found on the banks of the local river, but nobody ever found out what the Italian died.

In 1997, disappeared canadian student Ardavan Taherzadeh, and in 1999 also disappeared without a trace 21-year-old Maarten de Braine, son of a prominent Dutch banker.

In 2000, the Russian Alexey Ivanov went into a carefully planned three-week hike through the valley and just vanished without a trace. The curious thing is that when his route passed the search party, they found some quite old unidentified human remains (it's not missing if it informed students?), but not found any thing Ivanova and even its sign (!). The Russians were wiped off the face of the earth.

In the same year 2000, someone attacked two German tourists, a man and a woman when they slept in a tent. They fired several shots from a shotgun, but did not take any of their belongings. The man died immediately, and wounded a woman and then virtually crawling barely got to the village, where she received help.

Shortly after this incident in the same year 2000 a group of unidentified men attacked a 32-year-old Briton Martin young, his wife and their 14-year-old son. The attack also occurred at night when people were asleep in the tent. No one was killed, but was severely beaten. And it also wasn't a robbery. The attackers carefully searched, but no one in the end never found.

In 2013, the American adventurer Justin Shetler quit my job and went travelling around the world. He successfully toured many countries and in 2016 on a motorcycle came to Himachal Pradesh. He led a popular blog "adventures of Justine" (Adventures of Justin) and described his trip and spending the night in the local caves.

Here is the latest entry Justin in his blog:

"A sadhu (ascetic) asked me to pray with him. We live in the harsh conditions at altitude in a cave, meditate and do yoga. I'm going there tomorrow and should be back in the world of the Internet from the middle to the end of September. The trail to fall difficult and dangerous landslides. I should be back in mid-September or so. If I'm not back by the time do not look for me."

Post this despite its serious content was in the usual carefree manner of Justin and smiles. So nobody could suspect something dangerous. Moreover, the risk was always in the adventures of Justin and he and his readers are accustomed to this. But Justin never came back.

He was last seen September 3 on the way to the mountain lake Mantalai (Mantalai Lake) and it looked pretty bad. He was emaciated and very scared. Later, the family of Shetler organized a thorough search of Justin, and they found a local sadhu, whom apparently talked Justin before he disappeared. But when a sadhu was arrested and put in jail, it right in the camera committed suicide. Rumored he was killed by the police themselves, lest he reveal some terrible secret.

Earlier, in August 2015, in the valley of the lost pole Bruno Muschalik. He wanted to go camping in the small neighbouring valley of Parvati, collected food, clothes, got on the bus and... more it nobody saw.

What happened to all these people? The most logical version says that they are simply unable to cope with the local harsh climate. Froze, stumbled and fell into the abyss, got lost and died of thirst, and so on.

According to another version, they still were victims of local criminal elements. Despite the fact that there is one of the lowest in India, crime rates, and there are bandits and drug traffickers. And another version says that people could take their own life. Still, many foreigners come here in an attempt to solve something in your life, in search of something else, believing themselves to be outcasts and different. Maybe they wanted to disappear forever and to no one found.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»