Seven UFO Sightings Across the Himalayas: The CIA's 1968 Field Report

In 1968, a CIA field intelligence report documented seven UFO sightings spanning the India-China border region - across Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. One entry reported that a physical metallic disc-shaped object was found in a crater near Pokhara, Nepal. The document was classified CONFIDENTIAL with no foreign dissemination and never publicly released until the 2026 PURSUE disclosure.

What this document is

CIA-UAP-016 is a CIA Information Report - raw field intelligence, not an assessed judgment - covering UFO sightings collected by CIA field sources in the Indian subcontinent during early 1968. The document header notes: "NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE," the standard CIA caveat indicating it transmits what was reported, not what the agency concluded. The original classification was CONFIDENTIAL, with no foreign dissemination and controlled dissemination restrictions.

The document covers a 34-day window in the India-China border region - a geopolitically sensitive zone in 1968. The Sino-Indian War was in 1962, and tensions along the Himalayan border remained elevated throughout the late 1960s. The CIA had established collection networks in this region through its relationships with Indian intelligence services, particularly around the time of the Sino-Indian conflict. The sightings in this report came from those networks.

The manifest notes that "a more redacted version of this report has been available on CIA's public website" - meaning this PURSUE version is the less-redacted release. What the PURSUE version adds is not yet fully determinable from the available OCR, but the sighting table is substantially intact.

The seven sightings (from the document's table)

The CIA document presents the sightings in tabular form with columns for date, local time, area, direction of flight, and particulars of the object. The following is transcribed from the OCR - some table cells have degraded scan quality, noted where applicable.

Note: The above is transcribed from CIA-UAP-016's OCR-extracted text. The seventh sighting's date was not recoverable from the available scan quality. All quoted text is verbatim from the extracted document.

The metallic disc near Pokhara

The most striking element of this document is the seventh sighting's final line: that a "huge metallic disc-shaped object with a six-foot base and two feet in height was found in a crater at Baltichour, five miles NE of Pokhara" and that "portions of a similar object were found at Okjakot" (followed by additional location text that was lost in the OCR degradation).

To be precise about what this is: a CIA field source reported to CIA that a physical object was found in Nepal. The CIA transmitted that field reporting without assessing it. This is raw intelligence - exactly what the "NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE" header means. The CIA did not go to Pokhara, did not inspect the object, and did not authenticate the claim. What is documented is that someone with access to CIA collection channels reported it, and the CIA forwarded that report.

That said, a CIA field report transmitting a physical-object claim is significant in its own right. Field sources in CIA collection networks are recruited for their reliability and access. A source reporting to CIA that a disc-shaped object was physically recovered near Pokhara - in writing, in an intelligence report that was classified and transmitted to CIA headquarters - is a different category of claim than a press account or secondhand rumor.

The OCR for this sighting is partially degraded. The location "Baltichour, five miles NE of Pokhara" is readable. "Okjakot" (a second recovery location mentioned) is readable. The rest of that entry's particulars column was not recovered. No follow-up document in the PURSUE archive addresses the Pokhara claim.

The geographic and strategic context

These sightings cluster in a specific corridor: the India-China-Nepal-Bhutan border zone in early 1968. Some context that informs how to read them:

• The Sino-Indian border: The document notes in the Sikkim entry that the direction of flight toward Tibet "coincides with the one over Nepal." Multiple sightings along the same track from the direction of Tibet would be consistent with a high-altitude aircraft or missile test originating from Chinese territory.
• Ladakh and Chang La: Chang La pass (at approximately 17,590 feet) is a strategic Ladakh military road. The sightings on 4 March 1968 at Chang La and Ane La are in an area the Indian Army actively monitors. The Ladakh sightings also describe "blasting sounds" - acoustic signatures more consistent with a supersonic vehicle or projectile than a conventional aircraft.
• The "rocket-like" 25 March sighting: The description of a "rocket-like object" leaving a 20-yard trail at 20-25,000 feet fits a ballistic or high-altitude test vehicle trajectory better than most conventional aircraft. China had active missile and space launch programs in this period.
• The pattern of seven sightings in 34 days: Whether these are related events or independent reports from different sources is not determinable from the document alone. The CIA field report presents them together, suggesting the collecting officer saw a pattern worth reporting as a cluster.

The document does not offer an explanation or assessment. It transmits the sightings and leaves the interpretation open.

What the CIA did NOT do with this report

There is no follow-up document in the PURSUE archive to this report. No CIA assessment. No Defense Intelligence Agency reply. No request for additional collection on the Pokhara object. On the available record, the 1968 Himalayan report was filed and declassified more than 50 years later as part of the PURSUE UAP disclosure.

Whether the CIA investigated the Pokhara claim further - through other channels, in documents not yet released, or through liaison with Indian intelligence - is not answerable from the PURSUE archive. The absence of follow-up documents in this release does not mean no follow-up happened; it means if follow-up happened, it is either still classified or was not included in this release tranche.

Why 58/100

The Anomalousness Index scores CIA-UAP-016 at 58/100. The score reflects a combination of factors: the CIA collection channel and CONFIDENTIAL classification push the official-disposition axis up, but the score is constrained by the absent sensor data (purely human-source reporting), the anonymous field sources (credibility unverifiable from the document), and the heavy OCR degradation that prevents full verification of some entries. The physical-object claim in the seventh sighting - if accurate - would normally warrant a higher score, but raw field intelligence is exactly that: unverified. The scoring treats it as a report of a claim, not as evidence of the claim itself.

How to verify everything on this page

1. All quoted text in the sighting table is transcribed verbatim from the OCR-extracted text of CIA-UAP-016, linked above.
2. The "metallic disc" quote is on page 5-6 of the document (the sighting particulars for the NW Nepal entry).
3. The geographic notes about Chang La, Thimpu, and Pokhara are general knowledge; the document's specific locations are from the CIA field report as transcribed.
4. The 58/100 score and component breakdown are reproducible from this site's open rubric.