Travellers come in all types. Some want to touch all the world-famous places, while many others look for offbeat destinations not polluted by frequent tourist footfalls. When we talk about offbeat destinations, mysterious or spooky places form an entire segment of rarely visited or talked about places.

Lepakshi

Located in the Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh, Lepakshi has a brilliant architecture that will garner interest from even those who don’t care about beautiful things of the past. Each stone here has a story to tell, and one cannot pass by the town after only staying for a day. There is this small hill called Kurmasaila on this there is the Lepakshi temple. There is a huge sculpture of Nandi very near the temple. The temple has shrines of Vishnu, Shiva, and Veerbhadra. The temple has about 70 pillars, one has a mystery.

While pillars everywhere are built from the ground up and stand ON the ground, this one pillar appears to hang from the ceiling.  Called the Akaasa Sthamba, this 70 feet tall pillar has a distinct gap with the floor. Legend has it that it was dislodged by some British engineer before independence in a vain attempt to understand the secret behind the pillar’s gravity. Historians have dated the hanging pillar to the era of Ramayana. Lepakshi is a location of deep historic relevance and a slight to behold. For lovers of history and culture, there is a lot here to keep them mesmerised. However, the hanging pillar and the mystery behind it stands apart. Who knows, you could be the person who solves the mystery!

Also read: Fantastic Ideas To Make Your Solo Trip Exciting And Interesting!

Talakadu

A small town in the left bank of the river Kaveri, Talakadu  exists in the Mysuru district of Karnataka. The town has an unaccountable amount of sand, so much that it gets a desert-like look.

Legend has it that the queen had jumped into the river Kaveri here, along with her jewels. And that she’d cursed the town of Talakadu to turn into sand. This is the curse that was given along with the one according to which kings of Mysuru will never have their heirs. The curses are said to have been given about 400 years ago, and they are still as strong.

Talakadu also has five temples which are said to be the five faces of Shiva – Mallikarjuna, Arkeshwara, Maruleshwara, Vaidyanatheeshwara, and Pathaleshwara.

Chamoli

If you are planning a trip to Uttarakhand, check out Chamoli. A district frequented by trekkers and curious travellers, Roopkund in Chamoli is a picturesque location. Very close to the bases of Nanda Ghunti and Trisul, both Himalayas peaks, Roopkund is also known as the mystery lake or the skeleton lake.

While the mystery has been claimed to have been solved now, travellers flock the place even now because of the legend and the story that goes with the phenomenon. The lake is about 2 meters deep and is infamous for human skeletons bordering the lake. While the lake freezes in winter, when the snow melts, skeletons can be seen at the bottom of the lake too.

There had been a lot of curiosity and theories floating for years about how so many dead bodies ended at the same place. Extensive research has suggested that there had been in a violent hailstorm many centuries ago leading to this spectacle.

Sundarbans

The Sundarbans in West Bengal are extremely popular for many reasons, the royal Bengal tiger being one of them. One reason that would most definitely interest travellers who searched for ‘mysterious places to visit in India’ and landed on this article, is the mystery element. As is known, the Sundarbans happen to be the largest mangrove forests in the country.

Most of the forest is in Bangladesh, with a good stretch in India. Amidst all the natural beauty and the tiger, there is a mystery of a ghost. What began based on a photograph taken by a tourist of another, the person who was getting clicked gave a loud scream.

A couple of days later, the man became mysteriously unwell and died soon after because of a heart attack. Later, the photograph that was clicked on the fateful night was developed and it showed a woman in white standing next to the now dead man.

Legend has it that years ago, a honeymoon couple had visited the place. The entered the forest despite many warnings from guides and other travellers. Here they met a royal Bengal tiger who attacked and killed the man, but didn’t touch the woman.

The woman sat by her husband’s body and kept crying. People have claimed to see her crying there for days to an end. While few people say that she left shortly afterward, few others say that she killed herself there. Which explains the story of her spirit wandering in the deep corners of the forest.