Nagendra Sharma
Have you, dear reader, come across a man who has met the Yeti in person? Well, I have!
But let’s begin at the very beginning.
“We Wangdi Norbu Bhotia and Pasang Urgen, were accompanying Mr. Smythe over a pass when we saw tracks which we know to be those of a mirka, or the Wild Man. We have often seen bear, snow leopard and other animal tracks, but we swear that these tracks were none of these.”
Such stories about the Mirkha, or Shokpa, or Metoh Kangmi, or Dremo, or Ragshi Bonpo, or Mitre, or Yeti-Nepal’s legendary and prize fauna-are galore.
Long before the Western man came to the Himalayas to climb them or to explore, a belief in the existence of the Yeti, also known after Henry Newman’s translation in 1936 of Metoh Kangmi as the Abominable Snowman, persisted in the minds of the Nepalese. Many a mountain monastery displays somber likenesses of the Yeti, while the Khumbu monastery, at the base of Mount Everest, even preserves what the locality believe to be a Yeti scalp.
The scientific interest in the Yeti began as early as in 1899 when Waddel reported to the West about the trail of the “hairy wild man” of the Himalayas. Howard Bury’s report of having seen Yeti footprints on the 21, 000 feet Lhakpa-la pass followed (1921) and was confirmed by what Ronald Kaulback said were “five sets of tracks which looked as though made by a bare-footed man” in Upper Salween at a height of 16, 000 feet. Since then many Westerners including W.H. Tilman and John Hunt (1937), Eric Shipton (1951), Wyss-Dunant (1953), Abbe P. Bordet (1954), Tim Slick (1957), Neel Barber (1959) and Sir Edmund Hillary (1961), amongst many others, ahev tried a tryst with the Yeti, but with little success beyond further sightings of the proverbial footprints. The latest thrill was provided by members of the Japanese Sendai Club expedition to the 7, 219 meter Annapurna South peak in October 1975 when Yeti was said to have actually visited their base camp at 5, 170 meters.
But, whether or not the curious foreign explorers will ever come across the Yeti, the Nepalese mountainfolk will continue to believe in its existence as long as hair-raising stories about the “experiences” of their own people remain in popular circulation, as they do to this day. Stories, for example, of a neighbor having gone to live with a female Yeti, or of a Sherpa girl having been kidnapped by a mirka only to return from the wilderness with a baby that looks less, or more of a human offspring, in her arms!
Meeting the barefooted bogeyman, the Nepalese argue, is an unwelcome adventure. However, a man is able sometimes to worst a Yeti encounter simply with the help of a firebrand which with all their hairs, the Yetis dread being burnt and simply lope away. It is easy, too, to elude a female of the species, for you simply run down-hill-her enormous drooping breasts and long hairs covering her eyes hinder downward movement, to your great relief!
Huge and hairy, the body of the Shokpa bulges with muscles. He looks like a cross between man and ape, but walks erect and more like a human being than an animal. Some specimens are as tall as 2.5 meters-much too big to be a Himalayan human-with arms reaching his knees and hands powerful enough to grip-crush a human skull to smithereens. A slightly conical round-head with small expressionless eyes sits on an enormous chest. His calls are weird and nerve-shattering but a musky odour emanating from him and permeating the environs he stalks will scare a nervy Nepali miles away even otherwise! He leaves oversized footprints, some measuring upto 40 cms. in length, on snow and mud, but what befools the uninitiated (God help him!) is his turned-about feet!
Marriages between the Yetis and human-beings aren’t unknown, if you believe all the stories, that is! At Chilankha, a village three days trek north of Kathmandu, a very tall and robust man, his monkey-like facial features still driving a chill down the locals’ spine, claims a Shokpa ancestry on the father’s side-three generations away. People who have seen him are known to this writer vouch for his enormous strength by saying that he easily lifts weights meant for three average porters.Another family in Tarkeghyang in the Helmu region to the north of Kathmandu, si also believed to be a progeny of a Sherpa mother and a Shokpa father, while yet one more family in Melumche village is said to claim the reverse.
Any harm done to this shaggy mountain monster recolls on the humans or on one’s own family, so runs a local Nepalese belief. The Shokpa therefore, is held in awe and reverence by the Lamas and the laity alike. A prevalent superstition has it that whoever encounters a Shokpa may die an instant, violent death. So if a Sherpa, even by chance; comes across a Shokpa, he will instinctively shut his eyes with his hands or turn back and run away!
Now to revert to the man who has not only seen the Shokpa but has even photographed it! He is Yogi Naraharinath, a famous mendicant-scholar of Nepal, an expert on Nepalese lore, legends and history, and a widely travelled man. Though the story of his Shokpa encounted has an air of mystery rather like the Abominable Snowman himself, he claims he saw it while he, along with a group of pilgrims, was trekking laboriously up beyond the Sarsyu Gomba (monastery) on way to the Manasarovar lake.
“It was about eight in the morning”, says Naraharinath, “At the height we were at, any likelihood of coming across a living creature was a virtual impossibility.
“Suddenly, I was face to afce with the most unprecedented and unique life time experience-for, along a snow-covered ridge there stumbled, with a sure-footed downward move towards the abnks of the Shivaganga river, a gigantic, awe-striking snowman.
“He turned his head to glance towards me, but didn’t stop. He crossed the path and proceeded in the direction of Mount Kailash, western flank.
“I stopped breathlessly short and when the rest of the party caught up wit me, all I could was to point a finger towards the Shokpa and ask,”What on earth is that?”
The arrival of his friends, continues the Yogi, helped him gather courage enough to take out his box-camera from out of his pack and to take a shot at the Shokpa, who, however, was already half visible by then in the thick, drifting snow-mist. The reluctant photograph, naturally not a sharp one, is still in his possession, claims the Yogi.
This intriguing, if incredible, sighting was later discussed by the pilgrims with other people of Chiu Gumba and Mul Gumba lamaseries as they journeyed along but the locals thought nothing much of it, since, according to them, Shokpas were nothing uncommon in the area.
To those that dismiss the stories that the Yeti could be an offshoot of the pre-historic man and that the so-called Yeti tracks could simply be bear-ones, one may simply quote M. Heurelman’s candid opinion as expressed in Science at Avernir in 1952. Says he, “one need only look at a track to see if the big toe is on the inside or outside to decide whether it was made by a primate or a bear”. To this Mr. James Schuman adds, “Scientific annals are littered with the tarnished reputations of men whodismissed initial reports of the existence of the giant squid, the gorilla, the kapi and the giant panda”.
Thus it is that the Nepalese aren’t normally prone to raise skeptical eyebrows at the Yogi’s story-oor, for that matter, at the very many Shokpa stories circulating amidst them. Well, who knows if one day…