The Himalaya Mountains are the highest range in the world and have been referred to as the "Roof of the world". The Himalayas lie on the border beteen India, Nepal and Tibet. Large stretches around these valleys and peaks are unihabited. The tallest mountain in the world Mt. Everest 29,028ft high, lies half in China and half in Nepal.
The Yeti (Tibetan word meaning "magical creature") is described as ape like creature that walkes on two legs, 210cms (7ft) tall covered in thick hair. (very similar to Big foot). Many expaditions have gone in search for the Yeti but none have come up with and specimens, dead or alive, hair or any piece of skin yet, but the belief persists up to this day.
The Yeti has been apart of religious belief and tradition of the sherpas, even from the early days of Buddhism in the region. It has been said that the higher slopes of the Himalayas are inhabited by spirits and demons, with the Yeti inhabiting the lower slopes. could it be that these mysterious men of the mountain were not ment to be seen by mortal men.
One of the first well known and documented, sighting was the discovery of a naked footprint in the snow of Mt. Everest, at 21000 feet in 1921. The discovery was made by Colonel C.K Howard-Bury, a well repected mountain climber. He was leading a expedition to the Everest at the time of the sighting. One of the porters on the expedition reported that the footprint belonged to the Meth-Kangmi, roughly translated as a snowman ("Kang",snow and "Mi", man) with afoul stench ("Metch", roughly translated to simply something "disgusting") and this is how the name Abominable snow man was created.
In 1951 Eric Shipton Ward, a mountaineer, found and photographed some of the best tracks on the southwest slopes of the Menlung Glacier, which lies between Nepal and Tibet, at an alltitude of 20,000 feet. The prints were approximately thirteen iches wide and eighteen inches long. Ward followed the tracks for a mile before disappearing in hard ice. Some scientists who saw the photos taken by Ward could not adentify them with any known creature. Others said it could be the tracks of a languar monkey or red bear. The scientits noted the tracks in the snow, melted by the sun, can change shape and grow larger. This theory had one problem the bear and monkey normally moved on four feet. The tracks were clearly made by a creature that was a biped (a animal that moves on two legs).
A very interesting sighting of the Yeti.occured in 1970, by Don Whillans. Whillans was the deputy leader of an expedition to the south face of Nepal's Annapurna. At the camp site that Whillan had set up at 14000 feet, the expedition came upon a series of humanoid foot prints where no human settlements had existed. While Whillan was photographing the tracks, he sighted a dark bipedal creature with his binoculars, scurrying at a mountainside near the camp. The creature was sighted for about half an hour before disappearing into a clump of trees. The height of the site was lower than most footprint sightings at which hallucinations have never been recorded, and that none of the party brought any whiskey, many people were still sceptical. It is interesting to note that Whillan had little interest or knowledge of the Yeti. Which might suggest that he did see some thing that day that disappeared in the trees.
Is the Yeti a link between humans and apes or are they a subhuman that is yet to be discovered. Maybe these creatures do not want to be discovered, they may know the consequences of being found. The Yeti might have been watching the human race for thousands of years and have seen how we treat creatures that are different, dont understand or afraid of, we usually kill them. Just a thought.
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