Nepal, 1993
Sir Edmund Hillary was away. His primary school was closed for holidays. The playgrounds were deserted. Khumjung lay covered with ankle-deep snow. A pair of yaks stood motionless in a frozen meadow. Outside the gompa, the young janitor was washing his hair under a tap. 'If it’s the yeti that you are after,' he yelled out, 'you'll have to find the old woman in the barn over there.'
A hunched-back crone answered my knock. She cackled and waved a large ring jangling with keys in front of my eyes. 'Got money?'
I slipped her a twenty rupee note. She opened the brass padlock on the main door of the gompa and led me to a cupboard inside. Muttering to herself, she pulled out a dusty glass jar containing the yeti scalp.
The monastery actually had two scalps among its trophies. One of these was stolen some time ago. Some American tourists made away with it, the old woman said. Another monastery in Pengboche kept a scalp and the amputated hand of a yeti. These too have now been stolen. She was the guardian of the last artifact and she would not let anyone out of sight with it.
The scalp bears some resemblance to the skull of a middle-aged man, balding at the temples, with a thinning growth of short reddish-brown hair. It has been sent for tests several times to European laboratories. Sir Edmund Hillary, who saw yeti footprints himself, had it examined in 1961. The results have been inconclusive. Tests, both old and new, suggest that it is made from the shoulder of a serow, the Himalayan goat antelope. But fleas found in the hair do not resemble the fleas found on a goat antelope.
'Is it real?’ I asked.
The woman took it from my hands and put it away.
'Yetis are not as common now as they used to be,' a sherpa explained to me. 'In the old days, they used to come down from the forests above Khunde to steal foodstuff and kill the cattle. The elders of the village came up with a plan to put an end to it.’
One evening, the elders went out in the open with cisterns full of water. They drank the water, made merry, and beat each other playfully with wooden clubs. The next evening, they replaced the water with chang, a liquor, and the wooden clubs with sharp machetes, and locked themselves in their homes to watch what happened next. The Yetis imitated everything they saw. They had been watching the village folk the previous night. Now they came down, drank from the barrels, got drunk, picked up the machetes and killed each other.
'Since then,' the sherpa said, 'Yetis have not bothered us except twisting the neck of the occasional Yak or scaring the odd shepherdess.'
The forests above Khunde have thinned over the years. Trees have been burned for firewood. Human habitation has pushed back the wilderness. But there is a woman here who was pawed by a yeti some years ago. A volunteer English nurse working at the clinic told me how the terrified girl had to be treated for bruises and scars. The girl claimed that a yeti appeared from the thickets, twisted the neck of one of her yaks and then went on to attack her. When she fought back and screamed for help, the creature ran away on all fours.
Yetis are also known to walk upright on their hindquarters. One morning, within earshot of Tengboche gompa, I saw strange tracks in the snow. It was as if a bipedal creature had bounded across the path, leaping six feet in some places, and leaving knee-deep holes in the snow. After crossing the trail, the tracks continued in thick snow for a short length before disappearing into the thickets. The holes did not resemble the size and shape of feet. Nor was there any impression of toes. When a local man walked past, I pointed at them.
'What are these?' I asked.
'Musk deer,' he replied.
'Not a yeti?'
'Not a yeti. Yeti live in Khumbu. Much higher.'
I trekked to the teahouse in Deboche, where the Sherpa landlady offered me tea. Expedition photographs lined her kitchen walls. Most of them had stayed at her lodge either going to or coming back from Everest. Her husband was a mountain guide as were her sons. I mentioned the footprints. She laughed. 'Maybe it was the Yeti,' she said.
She remembered what happened to a Polish expedition on Everest. 'Their dog barked all night and in the morning, they saw big footprints on the Khumbu icefall.'
She glanced at her Rolex. I rose to leave.
'Have you ever seen the Yeti?' I asked.
‘Long ago, I heard him scream,' she replied. 'We had a big snowstorm one night. It was pitch dark. The wind was blowing. We were in a hut and we couldn't see anything outside. There we heard a high-pitched yell, over and over again, coming from very close. I was very little then but you don't forget something like that.'
- diary
A hunched-back crone answered my knock. She cackled and waved a large ring jangling with keys in front of my eyes. 'Got money?'
I slipped her a twenty rupee note. She opened the brass padlock on the main door of the gompa and led me to a cupboard inside. Muttering to herself, she pulled out a dusty glass jar containing the yeti scalp.
The monastery actually had two scalps among its trophies. One of these was stolen some time ago. Some American tourists made away with it, the old woman said. Another monastery in Pengboche kept a scalp and the amputated hand of a yeti. These too have now been stolen. She was the guardian of the last artifact and she would not let anyone out of sight with it.
The scalp bears some resemblance to the skull of a middle-aged man, balding at the temples, with a thinning growth of short reddish-brown hair. It has been sent for tests several times to European laboratories. Sir Edmund Hillary, who saw yeti footprints himself, had it examined in 1961. The results have been inconclusive. Tests, both old and new, suggest that it is made from the shoulder of a serow, the Himalayan goat antelope. But fleas found in the hair do not resemble the fleas found on a goat antelope.
'Is it real?’ I asked.
The woman took it from my hands and put it away.
'Yetis are not as common now as they used to be,' a sherpa explained to me. 'In the old days, they used to come down from the forests above Khunde to steal foodstuff and kill the cattle. The elders of the village came up with a plan to put an end to it.’
One evening, the elders went out in the open with cisterns full of water. They drank the water, made merry, and beat each other playfully with wooden clubs. The next evening, they replaced the water with chang, a liquor, and the wooden clubs with sharp machetes, and locked themselves in their homes to watch what happened next. The Yetis imitated everything they saw. They had been watching the village folk the previous night. Now they came down, drank from the barrels, got drunk, picked up the machetes and killed each other.
'Since then,' the sherpa said, 'Yetis have not bothered us except twisting the neck of the occasional Yak or scaring the odd shepherdess.'
The forests above Khunde have thinned over the years. Trees have been burned for firewood. Human habitation has pushed back the wilderness. But there is a woman here who was pawed by a yeti some years ago. A volunteer English nurse working at the clinic told me how the terrified girl had to be treated for bruises and scars. The girl claimed that a yeti appeared from the thickets, twisted the neck of one of her yaks and then went on to attack her. When she fought back and screamed for help, the creature ran away on all fours.
Yetis are also known to walk upright on their hindquarters. One morning, within earshot of Tengboche gompa, I saw strange tracks in the snow. It was as if a bipedal creature had bounded across the path, leaping six feet in some places, and leaving knee-deep holes in the snow. After crossing the trail, the tracks continued in thick snow for a short length before disappearing into the thickets. The holes did not resemble the size and shape of feet. Nor was there any impression of toes. When a local man walked past, I pointed at them.
'What are these?' I asked.
'Musk deer,' he replied.
'Not a yeti?'
'Not a yeti. Yeti live in Khumbu. Much higher.'
I trekked to the teahouse in Deboche, where the Sherpa landlady offered me tea. Expedition photographs lined her kitchen walls. Most of them had stayed at her lodge either going to or coming back from Everest. Her husband was a mountain guide as were her sons. I mentioned the footprints. She laughed. 'Maybe it was the Yeti,' she said.
She remembered what happened to a Polish expedition on Everest. 'Their dog barked all night and in the morning, they saw big footprints on the Khumbu icefall.'
She glanced at her Rolex. I rose to leave.
'Have you ever seen the Yeti?' I asked.
‘Long ago, I heard him scream,' she replied. 'We had a big snowstorm one night. It was pitch dark. The wind was blowing. We were in a hut and we couldn't see anything outside. There we heard a high-pitched yell, over and over again, coming from very close. I was very little then but you don't forget something like that.'
- diary
