Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery

by Daniel C Taylor

  Only the hunters who saw the two shockpa babies possess Lendoop’s aura of jungle savvy. They return on the fourth evening and want money for their story. The details fit with the po gamo–needeene themes I had heard for years. The two hunters ask me to climb the hill on the other side of the Barun River, their village’s side, not Shyakshila’s, and from that ridge they point to a peak above the narrow gorge that is the mouth of the Barun Valley. ‘The name of that peak,’ both men assert, ‘is the Shockpa Summit; many shockpas live there. The river is on the other side.’ But when I ask these two men whether they’ll take us to the river where they saw the babies playing, they say no. They never return.

  Nick points out that among the accounts we’ve heard, no two shockpa descriptions match, whereas descriptions of other wildlife do. Visitors to the camp from both sides of the Barun (Sibrung and Shyakshila villages) agree about the Shockpa Summit as the peak guarding the valley.

  Each morning, though, Lendoop returns; his descriptions are consistent. His observational powers are proven in how he notices all that is happening in the camp. And as he starts understanding what is happening, voluntarily, he starts pitching in to help. Accompanying him after the first day is Myang, one of Shyakshila Village’s headmen. After four days, no other person is willing to take us into the jungle. Lendoop and Myang have, it appears, staked out their territory as our guides. How are such decisions passed through village hierarchies? Presumably, Sibrung and Shimong, two neighbouring villages, also have hunters—but their hunters have never even come to our fire.

  Our tents are pitched in the middle of a trade route that has linked India with China for a thousand or more years. The spot is known as Barun Bazaar, though it is just flat bare land; the only building being a stone shelter, but all tell us that here regional markets occur periodically and twice a year there is a festival to celebrate the pure Barun. People who travel along this route are on practical missions up and down the Arun Valley, leaving homes to make small profits at some market or the other. Life doesn’t offer them the cushion of time we’re experiencing of four days just sitting, gathering stories.

  During the days our camp sits astride this trail where every trader, pilgrim, or messenger is a potential informant. We try not to show particular interest in Yeti stories. As the reports mount of what they describe about the dense jungle valley behind the camp, what is confirmed again and again is that only a few know that jungle. What the king says is the most wild jungle in Nepal seems to be a place everyone stays away from, even those who live on its borders. They shudder when we suggest that they might want to make a home and fields inside. Only to the jungle’s edge do they go, seldom past the Shockpa Summit, to gather medicinal herbs, grass for animals, bamboo, and timber.

  Many who come are curious about us, especially women and children. These people are not the wayfarers who stop for a moment. These are mostly women, and as women do throughout the Indian subcontinent, they come in groups, and they come to see one thing. On the fifth morning, we’re awakened by quiet whispers on the other side of the thin tent walls. ‘Jesse.’ ‘Jesse.’ ‘Where is he?’ ‘Is Jesse awake?’ The women wait.

  Jesse steps out of the tent, pushed by Nick. From inside we hear, ‘This is Jesse.’ Peeping, we watch Jesse walk towards them, then run after something he’s spotted, with a bobbing stride that women universally seem to enjoy. He is embraced by their gaze.

  ‘His clothes, have you ever seen such brown, green, and yellow?’

  ‘Look at how big he is! I am told he is two years.’

  ‘The yellow hair, the sun shines in it like straw after harvest.’

  After breakfast Jesse has his bath as he has each day of this expedition. With so many sights and events to explore, this two-year-old gets dirty quickly. Over the fire Pasang heats water in his giant pot. Sitting in a small yellow plastic basin, Jesse splashes. Jennifer soaps him down with the first tubful, then rinses him with a second. Such copious use of warm water and soap is new to these women. More than hair or clothes, Jesse’s cleanliness sets him apart.

  Today, though, at last, we are ready to start the trek into the jungle. As tents go down, a trader we have never seen before walks into the camp. He looks around, sees Jesse in his bath, and says, ‘That must be Jesse.’ Like the Yeti for us, Jesse gains legendary status. It is indeed time to head into the jungle.

  two

  In the Yeti’s Jungle

  2.1 The Yeti’s Footprint in Dumjanje Stone

  Source: Author

  I hoist Jesse on to my shoulders, and we start the climb into the Barun gorge. He steers me by the pressure of his knees on my chin; for him, it is easier than pulling my ears as before. My head falls forward to loosen his pressure on my windpipe, making me understand how horses get broken; it’s also how parents get made.

  Contrasted to his swaying seat on the trek in, now he has lithe balance. Firmness of seat and his knees under my chin hold him, so I no longer must grasp his legs. Each of us brings skills out of childhood. Balance is one such skill which is often overlooked. Jesse and I had practised in America with child-carrying packs, those with ‘safe’ straps and padding, that made the weight easier on the father. But positioning his head right behind mine caused him to lose the view of where we were going, missing the chance to think about guiding our way, or to spot a squirrel in a tree. A two-year-old sees excitement in a squirrel’s jump.

  So now I am seeing the world again through eyes that are two-years-old. Such seeing had opened India’s jungles to me when England still ‘ruled’ India. I was then bursting with energy, and to spend that the jungle was just outside our door, a world into which I ran daily. It taught me to learn patterns different from the linearity of A, B, C, or of symmetrical wooden blocks. Running into the jungle initiated me into the world whose ways work by complexity; it taught me to wrestle with questions. Unlike school, the world presents us with few questions that have right answers.

  Jesse will now start learning how to enter the jungle, learning to wrestle with questions rather than believe that the world leads linearly to answers. Learning through balancing. As two eyes give depth perception, four eyes (of young and of old) give perspective. The human journey, with the changes of the new human-made age now upon us, goes into a new wild where life functions not by rules, but through balancing of relationships. Safety is wanted both today and also in growing skills for tomorrow. When ‘the wild’ becomes familiar in this new age, what is found is ‘the alive’ of the new today. As with learning languages at early ages … shaped also at an early age is how the mind makes connections, setting values in place of how to engage Nature that remain with us as we grow.

  We catch up with Jennifer an hour out. Jesse’s knees come forward into my chin, his signal to stop. ‘Mama, on the ground, I need that stick. I need it.’ Dutifully, she hands up the stick. A memory flashes of the stick I took when I went out; it stood by the door of our bungalow in the Himalaya. I felt magical powers when I held it, a stick that did a double duty swung up to my shoulder to mimic a gun. Each time I came back, I kept it by the door, near Grandpa’s staff. Swinging his stick now, Jesse directs the route up.

  With the improbable purpose of heading into the jungle to seek the Yeti, the question hanging is whether to take our two-year-old into the jungle? To partly pass my childhood to my son is of value. But is it safe? DNA may carry our bodies, and values carry in what we share. All that is a reason, but is it safe? My father grew up in the jungles where the Ganges comes out of the Himalaya. Home, until he left for college and medical school in America, was in tents that moved each week by ox cart to a new camp, and under the flaps of the big tents came in jackals, snakes, rabbits, even a she-wolf that tried to lift him from his crib. Dad learned to understand the calls of birds and see signposts in trees, and developed an ability to find his way home following his instinct rather than trails. When I was two, Dad and Mother brought me to the Indian Himalaya. I want Jesse to imprint Nature’s cadences and tones too, with
mind-shaping self-definition as with a mother tongue, understanding being with the wild and being comfortable there.

  But is it safe? This question will be answered only at the end, as with the quest we now take for the Yeti. The great reward of exploration is not knowing beforehand what will happen.

  Stepping off the trail and walking out on to a crag, Jesse slides off my shoulders. Across the gorge he spots langurs. ‘Most monkeys do not eat leaves,’ I explain. ‘See the long tails on these, this helps them balance as they leap in the trees seeking the right leaves.’ Jennifer and Nick catch up, accompanied by Lendoop, muzzle-loader on shoulder. Strung out behind are six porters carrying fifty-pound loads.

  Lendoop leads us now as we leave Shyakshila’s fields and enter the jungle. I lengthen my stride to catch up, but he then speeds up, calling back: ‘The trail is good. This way’. Each day I grow more attracted to this man. That morning when he showed up with two unexpected porters, I had ribbed him saying, ‘Adding two more jobs for your neighbours’, as he insisted on lighter loads. His reply had been, ‘They are my friends, it is your job to help.’

  We’ve now climbed above the cliff that blocks the Barun Valley. It seems there is a way to enter the valley along its crest without having to climb above the next set of cliffs. Ten-foot tall grass surrounds us. What happened to the trees that must have once been here? No sign suggests an attempt to make fields. Turning around a bulge from where the slope levels, sits Lendoop in his green hunting clothes, arms akimbo on knees, like a frog on his rock. Grinning, he croaks: ‘This place is the camp. We stop now.’

  ‘Impossible. The day is only half gone. You and the porters are getting five more rupees per day than the government rate and are carrying light loads. We must go inside the jungle.’

  ‘Porters could go, but baby cannot. We must camp here. This is the last place where tents can be set up. After this, there is no flat place for one long day.’

  As evening falls, Jennifer, Nick, and I sit outside our tent, the stillness settling. Nearby, Jesse helps Pasang push sticks into the cook fire, knowing now not to pull them out once lit, watching as they burn, and then pushing the non-burning end. A croaking sound comes from the porters’ camp. Nick returns after investigating it, his face a mix of grin and grimace: ‘They caught frogs in the stream we passed back there and are now doing a live roast.’

  As night wraps around us, tents sparkle as dew settles in drops on the fabric with a reflected sunset. The wind plays in the bows of the trees. With the darkening day, birds wish each other goodnight, interspersed with an occasional mysterious hoop. As animals go to rest, the day celebrates the night’s coming. The Barun River below echoes a steady roar.

  AS MORNING LIGHTS THE OPPOSITE SLOPE, I tighten a high-powered scope to the tripod’s swivel. Contour after contour on the south-facing slope is scanned, seeking animals coming into warmth after a winter night. The ghoral should be coming out, maybe also the serow. But yesterday and today, only langurs were seen. Twenty-seven years ago, when I had my first sighting of Yeti footprints in a photograph in the Statesman newspaper, the accompanying text said that a curator at the British Museum suggested that a langur was the maker of the mysterious footprint. Now in the Barun, langurs are the only wildlife seen.

  Since childhood, I have been trained to start the hunt before dawn and stay quiet in the camp. But since dawn, porters have been noisily coming for cups of tea to our campfire with no sign of preparing to depart. But I hold my tongue; a working relationship with them and Lendoop is more valuable than any result for today. Finally, the hunter hands Pasang his empty mug and walks to the jungle edge. The others hasten to their loads.

  With this orchestration of the morning, Lendoop has let all know who leads this trip. Without that leadership coming from all his team’s desire to participate we will not find our quarry in the jungle. He is now swinging his kukri through the bamboo. The barrier falls with that large curved Nepali knife, stalk on to stalks before, each stalk an inch thick, stacking each stalk by the same kukri swing that cuts. How do bears get through this? For it is out of this bamboo, Lendoop has said, that they come to raid Shyakshila’s fields.

  An hour later we cross the ridge we’ve been climbing and drop to the west-facing side. Lendoop leads among gigantic trees with a maze of old dead logs and branches where decaying vegetation lies underneath like a sponge. I thrust my walking staff; nearly a foot deep. Looking ahead, I suggest the way seems easier above. ‘This is the way,’ Lendoop replies. ‘There might be open space along the base of that cliff,’ I say. ‘This is the way’ is all he says.

  At times we cross over trickles that sound beneath the decay. The slopes are usually dry in the Himalaya at this time of the year. But as we enter the wet air of the jungles, there’s periodic gurgling under the jungle floor. Jesse hears it too. ‘Water, Papa. I want to drink some water.’ Why is water running long after the monsoon? A steep slope like this should drain fast. Again, I thrust my walking stick in. Again, the forest humus is a foot deep—never have I seen forest decay so deep. It is, of course, this decay that is soaking up rainwater and then gradually letting it out.

  I keep looking for footprints. Lendoop claims he’s seeing tracks, calling out a serow once, another time a bear, but the bent blades or broken twigs he must be connecting into shapes are beyond my detection. In jungles such as this it grows more evident how hard it will be to see animals, made harder as all animals except monkeys are shy. Grandpa taught me to use streambeds for a wildlife census. But in the absence of visible streambeds that technique is impossible. I will need a winter storm to bring snow low to spot footprints.

  But then at the place Lendoop calls Dumjanje, a somewhat level area, he says, ‘See this. You have been asking about Yeti and Shockpa.’ It is the first time I’ve heard him use the name ‘Yeti’, and when I used it back at the confluence he seemed not to know what I meant. ‘See this. Here I am showing you a Yeti footprint.’

  I looked at the large flat rock to which he was pointing. Unmistakable, embedded into the stone is a large footprint with bulbous toes, exceedingly similar to the footprint that Shipton photographed in 1951. Beside that print is another, looking very much like a person’s hand.

  ‘You asked me about Yeti footprints five days ago—I am showing you,’ Lendoop says with a wide smile. ‘We camp here.’ It is clear that Lendoop knows this footprint is not animal-made. Then he goes on to say, ‘Signs are on the land that people do not understand. Forces that make footprints and handprints into stone must be very strong.’

  THE NEXT DAY, WE CROSS PAYREENI KHOLA, and the cliff scraped bare leading to the stream shows that even tree and bushes are moved when the cliff above breaks.

  A roar has been growing. First, the sounds were whispering like the wind. Now, the air is cold, plants drip with spray, and the sound grows. Jesse’s knees pinch my ears. Pushing apart wet bamboo I face a shaft of rock. Hurtling down the shaft a waterfall has pounded out a pool of the rock. Water swirls peacefully in this pool, then slops over the outer ledge and splashes down, another waterfall with more spray.

  The Kali Khola stream has carved this raceway into a stone cliff. I look up the stream’s opened slope framed with green jungle. A rainbow glistens against the blue sky. Since our first meeting, Lendoop has spoken of this pool where the water slops over the narrow ledge, the only place on the Barun’s slope to cross the Kali Khola. That stone lip is 20 yards beyond my boots. To arrive at this spot I had not sighted a single trail mark. Shapes guiding Lendoop were of Nature, not man, such as tree blazes; he was reading a language in the deep intricacies.

  Lendoop stands in the pool. To join, I must step from where I stand, then cross along the rock edge. I take the first step, left hand stretched so that my fingers grip what seems to be a bush growing out of the wall, placing the right hand with the walking pole on the rock. Jesse’s arms embrace my forehead, knees tighten. Surprised to see us step out, Lendoop shouts, ‘Sahib, sahib, don’t!’ and charges towards us.


  Jesse flings back from Lendoop’s charge, still holding my head, pulling me off balance. My left foot slips on the ledge as my right hand lets go of the walking pole to grab his leg. The left foot sliding and the right holding, my left hand holds the bush that grows from the rock. I have spun halfway around, and my turned head sees Jennifer stepping out of the bamboo.

  Jesse’s mother’s face is a universe of expression—mouth open, a silent scream as she watches her son, who, feeling my fall, has held firm and locked his knees even more. Throughout, the Kali Khola never misses a splash. Bush roots deep in the well-watered rock hold me, and my left foot is secure again.

  ‘Sahib, dangerous, very dangerous. Me, I carry Jesse.’ Lendoop stands beside me. Adrenaline races. I storm past, across the stone ledge. With the magic of a mountain guide, he melts into the rock so as not to take up space as I pass. When in the pool between the waterfalls, I look back at Jesse’s mother, her eyes still wide.

  2.2 The Cascading Waterfalls of the Kali Khola

  Source: Author

  A WORD ABOUT SAFETY IN THE WILD. Rock climbing is safe because of the rope. Footholds may slip, handholds let go, but with a belay comes safety. Danger in the wild is almost always from falling. The risk of infections requires proximity to contagion, and where few people live is little toxin. Animals may attack—but that happens mostly in the imagination. In the wild, the major danger is a slip. As a belay arrests a fall, a tool to prevent falls is a walking stick. With the stick, the normally two-footed human animal steps back evolutionary to three feet. And, as just happened on the wet ledge, it is possible to have a fourth leg also. Putting my hand into the bush to use all my four feet was a reflex learnt early in my jungle childhood. Trusting my partner on my shoulders was another skill learnt. But there are always surprises, such as Lendoop’s mistrust of the non-jungle man.