yeti

 

 Source:-LONELY PLANET OF NEPAL

YETI

Along with the equally slippery nation of shangri la, the yeti is one of Nepal's most famous cultural exports, occupying a hotly debated biological niche somewhere between zoology and folk religion.

Before you throw your arms up in the air and storm out of the room, bear in mind that the pro-yeti camp has some serious proponents. in 1938 mountaineer Bill Tilman tracked yeti footprints for over a mile, later writing that their existence is surely no longer a matter for conjecture.' Eric shipton photographed a yeti print on the menling\menlungtse glacier in 1951. Edmund Hillary led an expedition to rolwaling in 1960 to track the yeti, as did Chris boning ton in 1986 and travel writer Bruce Chatwin. Reinhold messner claimed to have seen a yeti in Tibet in 1986 and wrote a book about the subject called my quest for the yeti.

There are dozens of cases of local sightings. Villagers in the rongbuk region of Tibet apparently discovered a drowned yeti corpse in 1958. in 1998 the official police report on the murder of a Sherpa woman near dole on the egokyo trek in Nepal cited 'yeti attack' as the cause of death! Japan's most celebrated yeti hunter is Yoshiteru Takahashi, who in 2003 claimed to have found a yeti cave on the slopes of Dhaulagiri (his camera froze before he could take a photo.........).

The rolwaling region seems to be the heartland of yeti sightings, followed closely by the Khumbu. Trekkers on the Everest base camp trek can still see the yeti scalp at khumjung monastery (actually made from the skin of a serow- a type of goat\antelope), though the yeti hand of Pangboche, said to have been that of a mummified lama, has mysteriously disappeared. The region's 'yeti pelts' actually belong to the Himalayan blue bear.

the word ' yeti' comes from the Tibetan yeh-teh, or 'man of the rocky\snowy places'; the alternative Tibetan names are the migyu and mehton kangmi, or 'abominable snowman'. Reports from western Nepal talk of the lamkarna, or 'long-eared' maonster. First-hand accounts of the odour that smell of garlic, but a sign at Khumjung monastery outlines the different types of yeti in more subtle and, more importantly, cultural terms. The apelike dre-me and tel-ma are messengers of calamity, it says, while the chu-ti moves on all foure and preys on goats, sheep and yaks. Worst of all the mi-te, a man-eater, 6ft to 8ft tall, with 'a very bad temperament'. Consider yourself warned. 

source:- lonely planet of Nepal Trekking

YETI

Countries all around the world have legends of hairy human-like animals that live in areas untouched by modern explorers. In Nepal and Tibet, this mythical figure is known as the yeti, from the Tibetan yeh (meaning 'snow valley') and teh ('man'). You may also hear the name mehton kangmi, which translates as 'abominable snowman'.

According to alleged sightings, the yeti walks upright with a lumbering gait, but often drops to all fours. its body is covered with black or brown fur and it gives a high, piercing yell when disturbed. However, like America's Bigfoot and the Australian yowie, the yeti legend is mainly built on circumstantial evidence-melting footprints found high on the slopes of Himalayan peaks and sightings in blizzards by superstitious herders and altitude-affected mountaineers.

Every year there are new expeditions to find the truth of the yeti legend. Sir Edmund Hhillary even carried a yeti skull from khumjung to America to be studied in 1960. The relic turned out to be made from antelope fur, but believers are still hopeful that proof will be found. Here are some pivotal moments in yeti history:

1. 1889- major la Wassell finds a set of mysterious footprints in northeastern Sikkim; the first recorded sighting of a yeti bye a westerner.
2. 1923- British mountaineer Alan Cameron spots humanoid creatures walking along a ridge near Everest.
3. 1937- lord hunt and hw Tilman find yeti tracks on the Zemu glacier in sikkim.
4. 1939- German professor Ernst Schaefer visits Tibet in search of the yeti, allegedly on the orders of the nazi SS.
5. 1951- Eric Shipton discovers yeti tracks during a reconnaissance mission to Everest.
6. 1970- don Whillans hears weird cries and watches a yeti through binoculars while climbing Annapurna.
7. 1984 Tim mc Cartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer find unexplained tracks near the summit of Everest.
8. 1986- Reinhold Mesner claims to have seen a yeti in Tibet; he later describes it as being like a Tibetan bear with human abilities.'
9. 1992 peter Matthiessen collects 'yeti hair' in mustang, but DNA sequencing reveals it to be from a horse.
10. 2008- a Japanese expedition to Dhaulagiri IV finds yeti footprints, but fails to capture the yeti on film.

Source: - DISCOVERY 

Yeti

Of all the myths and legends of the high Himalayan, perhaps the best known is that of the yeti or ''abominable snowman''. But is it a myth? Or is there in fact, a creature roaming the frozen wastes, preying on yaks and frightening human intruders?

Such a beast was first described to the west as a shaggy wild man by a European mercenary in Mongolia in the early 15th century. Himalayan peoples who lived in remote areas below the snow line spoke of him as anything from ape to supernatural being. To the Sikkimese, for instance, he was the sprit of the hunt, only visible to the devout: votive offerings of any kill had to be made to him.

The British tended to dismiss, as colourful legend, native sightings of strange snow creatures. In 1899, however, major L.A. Waddell, an authority on Tibetan Buddhism, described finding footprints that ''were alleged to be the trail of the hairy wild men who are believed to live among the eternal snows''. In 1921, colonel C.K. Howard-bury, who led the reconnaissance on the north side of Everest through Tibet, saw dark figures moving across the snow and came upon enormous footprints.

Stories continued to flow from Tibet and Sikkim, and the great snowman debate was on. It was given credence by a British columnist who mistranslated the beast's Tibetan name, migyu, as '' the abominable snowman.'' the name stuck.

Years later, when Nepal allowed foreigners to climb mount Everest; the '' snowman'' became fixed in the world's imagination. The Sherpas who assisted on those early expeditions told climbers stories about the yeh-tch, or yeti. Giant footprints were seen by such well-known mountaineers as Frank Smythe, bill Tilman and john hunt.

On a November afternoon in 1951, climber Eric Shipton found a clear trail of naked human-looking footprints high up in the snow of the Menlungtse Glacier. He and his companion, Sherpa Sen Tenzing, followed the trail for about 1.5 km (1 mile) until it disappeared in moraine. Shipton took clear and well-defines photographs of the yeti footprints; they were oval in shape, more than a foot long and very wide, with a distinctive protruding big toe. Suddenly, all those mysterious sightings, the unknown yells and whistles, the stones and branches hurled at startled travelers, seemed to make sense. there was something out there.

According to the Sherpas, the yeh-tch literally ''man of the rocky places''- is of there types. There is the huge, calltle-eating szu-tch (or juti), about 2.5 metres (8ft) tall when standing on its hind legs but usually on all fours, which is almost certainly the blue bear of Tibet. There is the Thelma, a small ape-like creature which walks on its hind legs, has long dangling arms and is coveres in red strayed far from home. And there is the mih-tch (or miti), a man-sized ape, which but for its face and stomach is covered is shaggy red hair. by all accounts, it is an abominable creature, attacking on sight. Some say it is a man-eater.

the mih-tch is the true yeti for which there is no definite explanation. it is this anthropoid that is painted on monastery murals and religious scroll. Sherpa single out the orang-utan when shown photographs of known animals; fossils of extinct giant orang-utans have been found in the Himalayan foothills. Could some have survived by sheltering in the once remote reaches below the snow line? Some therorise this mih-tch could be a direct descendant of gigantopithecus, peeking man of one million years Bc. this ape man, they say, could have evolved in obscurity, in inhospitable habitats.

Several expeditions have set out in search of the yeti. In 1954, London's daily mail fielded an impressive team of experts which, though it failed to find the yeti, returned with a bank of knowledge on the creature. Mountaineer Norman Dyhrenfurth in 1958 found footprints similar to those photographed by Shipton.

In 1960, sir Demund Hillary led an expedition to Shipton's yeti country, below the great peaks of Gauri Shankar and Menlugtse,. The expedition was equipped with the latest scientific equipment and a signed-and-sealed order from the Nepalese government that the yeti, if found, was on no account to be killed or kept in captivity. Hillary's expedition procured furs alleged to be these of yetis and found endless suspicious tracks in the snow. it also borrowed the legendary ''yeti scalp'', a sacred relic, from the Sherpa monastery of Khumjung. This iron hard dome of leather and red bristles had baffled climbers and other observes for years but, when taken for examination to Chicago, Paris and London, the ''scalp'' was declared to be a 200 year-old artifact made from the hide of a wild Himalayan goat, the serow. Hillary's furs, mean while, were discovered to be those of the Tibetan blue bear. Many of the footprints were those of foxes and ravens, whose tracks had melted and taken on grotesque sizes and shapes. Western ''experts' were quick's to debunk the yeti legend. But the yeti refuses to be killed so easily. There are two other scalps in Sherpa country. In the monasteries of Pangboche and Namche Bazar, and a skeletal yeti hand at Pangboche. one of these scalps was examined in Europe in the early 1070s; some declared it a blatant fake while others said it was genuine. a Sherpa girl was said to have been savaged in 1974. Yaks' necks were broken by something that grabbed them by the horns and twisted their head. The high whistles have been heard again. Expedition camps have been visited at night by a creature that left footprints in the snow. When members began following and photographing, something screamed at them. Author Bruce Chatwin wrote of his discovery of tracks in the Goky valley in 1983 and Reinhold Messner found traces in Tibet in 1986. Chris Bonington led a 1988 expedition to Menlungtse, although journalists' reports of sightings and samples continued to be treated with disdain by the scientific community. Proof remains inconclusive, to say the least. there is even an irreverent though forever-to-be-unconfirmed theory that Shipton's 1951 yeti footprints were an elaborate hoax.

ape, sub-human, wild man of the snows, or demon-the myth lives on and perhaps someday the yeti will be found. it was not very long ago, after all, that china's giant panda and Africa's mountain gorilla were mere legends.