Kashmir's Hidden Horsemen

A secret field of ancient horsemen in Jammu and Kashmir could rewrite Central Asian history. But years after their discovery, the statues are crumbling, and no one is stopping it.

- Fiza Masoodi

In June 2017, Natalia Polosmak, a Russian archaeologist known for uncovering the Siberian Ice Maiden, stepped into the thick woods of Gora Gali in Pirpanjal region. She had traveled thousands of miles following a rumour.

It was just a vague tip about strange statues lost in the mountains. She thought she might find a few carved rocks. What she found instead stopped her in her tracks.

Nearly 200 life-sized stone horsemen, frozen mid-ride, were scattered across the forest floor.

Some stood upright, their stone faces staring toward the horizon. Others had fallen, overtaken by roots, moss, and mud. The figures were hauntingly detailed: high-cheekboned riders wearing boots and tunics, holding curved daggers, small bows, and goblets.

Some shared a single horse, packed two or three at a time. Women appeared beside or behind them, draped in carved skirts and ornaments. They seemed part army, part funeral procession.

"I have never seen anything like this in India," Polosmak later recounted. "These are not purely Indian faces."

She was right.

The statues didn't look like anything in India's official archaeological record. To her, they pointed elsewhere—back to Central Asia, to a nomadic empire that swept through parts of South Asia 1,500 years ago and then seemed to vanish.