The Samudra Tapu 'Robot' Sighting, Himachal Pradesh, 2004

In late September 2004, a small expedition from the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad, part of ISRO, was camped in the Samudra Tapu valley of the Chandra basin, in Lahaul and Spiti district. Its job was practical. The team was studying the glaciers to check satellite data against the ground.

India Today described the party as three SAC scientists and two geologists, with porters. It was led by senior glaciologist Dr Anil V. Kulkarni. The camp sat at about 17,000 ft by one account, about 14,000 feet by another, in the glacier country near Chandra Taal lake.

Monday, 27 September 2004. Around 6:45 in the morning. The team was getting ready to leave the tents. Then a porter spotted something white on an adjacent ridge. "Sir, the snow man is coming."

It was between 3 and 4 ft high. The witnesses described a cylindrical head with two balloon-type attachments, a body, hands and two legs. Kulkarni later said one balloon was red and the rest were white. The figure came down the slope towards the camp, floating a few inches above the ground. Geologist Sunil Dhar watched it closely. "It seemed to be walking, planting and pacing its steps like a human being."

It came within about 50 m of the team. When they went towards it, it started a steep 70-degree ascent towards the ridge top. In the rays of the rising sun its colour turned black. Soon it was white again. Kulkarni told the Hindustan Times it took off vertically and moved south along the ridge for 3 to 4 minutes. Then it came back. It hovered above the camp, noiselessly. Finally it moved north, receding into a white dot in the sky. India Today put the whole event at about 40 minutes.

Kulkarni and Dhar took digital photographs. On 2 October 2004 the Hindustan Times reported that the Ahmedabad space centre was analysing them. Kulkarni interviewed each team member separately and sent a detailed report to the Prime Minister's Office, ISRO, the Army and several intelligence agencies. The scientists also contacted robotic labs in the US, Germany and Sweden to learn what was technologically possible in unmanned flying vehicles.

By February 2006, India Today reported that the matter had even reached Parliament. In a written reply, the minister of state with the Prime Minister's Office had confirmed the ISRO report. No official conclusion has been published. No photograph from that morning has surfaced in public.

The first thought was a balloon. The Hindustan Times headline asked it plainly: a balloon, a spy-sat, or a UFO? Kulkarni rejected the idea. The object moved against the wind. It lifted off vertically. It hovered in place. It seemed to move along the ground. The team also ruled out a drone and an airship, since none they knew of could take off vertically.

India Today admitted the object looked like balloons bunched together, but wrote that its maneuverability and flight path were not like balloons. Kulkarni's own verdict was firm. "There is no known matching technology yet in the civilian realm to explain the mysterious object we saw so up close." In 2012, India Today raised another possibility: a spy drone from across the border, or a spy balloon.

The case returned in 2012, when Indian Army and ITBP troops reported glowing yellow spheres near Pangong Tso in Ladakh. The Register and IBTimes revived the 2004 encounter as background. Those Ladakh lights were later put down to Jupiter and Venus. That explanation never reached Samudra Tapu.

Today the story lives on as the UFO legend of Chandra Taal, told to trekkers beside local tales of fairies. The figure on the ridge remains unexplained.