Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

by Dom Joly

  Hermann and I set off uphill and, after fifteen minutes, passed a group of three Germans who looked to be very near death. They were at a stage way beyond contempt and I could now see a vicious, desperate sort of jealousy in their vacant eyes. They looked capable of ripping me off Hermann and claiming him as theirs. I kept his adopted nationality quiet and remembered the Dalai Lama. I passed by them quickly with a regal wave.

  We climbed and climbed and Hermann made amazing progress. After an hour and twenty minutes we reached a plateau where Hillary had built the highest airstrip in the Himalayas: Syangboche.

  This is a dust track ending in an aircraft-carrier type ramp from which to fling the planes into the void. He’d had it built to help evacuate stricken climbers. What I hadn’t known was that, just three months after its completion, his wife and daughter died in a plane crash.

  Hermann, Mingmar and I plodded over the deserted runway and entered a forest of short, stubby juniper trees. The ground was now an endless lawn of coarse grass and it reminded me very much of plateaus in the High Metn in Lebanon where I used to picnic as a child. On we plodded until we came to a corner with yet another magnificent view of Everest. We continued through patches of rhododendron, pine and juniper; it was by far the most incredible scenery of the trip so far. Here I was, riding a majestic German/Nepalese steed through the unexplored Himalayas. They would surely write books about my bravery in years to come. Only the very boldest made it here . . .

  Suddenly up ahead there appeared an elegant, low-slung modern building. I asked Mingmar what it was.

  ‘Everest View Hotel . . . Many Japanese, they come for one night to see Everest . . .’ He looked slightly appalled by the concept.

  I was dumbstruck.

  ‘But, how do they get here?’ I asked plaintively.

  ‘They fly little plane from Lukla to Syangboche and then taken to hotel for one night. Is for very lazy tourist.’

  ‘More lazy than me?’ I asked, sitting on Hermann.

  ‘Much badder than you . . .’ Mingmar grinned from ear to ear.

  ‘But you can’t just fly into this altitude and not get bad altitude sickness?’ I asked.

  ‘No, they have oxygen in rooms but many get very sick; is big problem.’

  ‘Well, I suppose, since it’s here, we might as well go in for a cup of tea,’ I said.

  ‘OK, but very expensive,’ warned Mingmar.

  I got off Hermann and looked around vainly for valet parking. I tied him to a rhododendron bush and we marched up the imposing steps into reception. It was all minimalist swank inside and we were soon ushered on to the Everest-View Terrace for the pièce de résistance. The view was un-bloody-believable, possibly the best I’ve ever seen from a hotel, and once again I found myself staring slack-jawed at Everest.

  We sat down and had a cup of tea. We were not alone on the terrace. To our left was a group of about twenty Japanese residents. The waiter told us that they had arrived only an hour ago. Looking at them, most seemed to be quite near death – but they were still bravely trying to rustle up enough energy to strike some gangsta camera poses. It was clear, though, that their hearts weren’t in it. As we watched, one man dropped his camera and ran to the edge of the balcony and vomited profusely over the railings. A couple of the group started taking photos of the vomiting man while several started to suffer from the inevitable gag reflex. It was time to move on.

  We walked down from the hotel through a small rhododendron forest until we reached the bottom of the valley and entered the village of Khumjung. I was really chuffed. Hermann dawdled through the dusty streets. He’d clearly had enough and knew that the end was in sight. We came into the main square in which sat a guesthouse run by Mingmar’s brother. On the other side of the square was a stupa and the Hillary School where Mingmar had been a student.

  We had lunch, the ubiquitous vegetable curry and rice. While we ate Mingmar told me that the woman who was attacked by a Yeti and thrown into a river would talk to me . . . For 6,000 dollars.

  I nearly spat out my curry. I politely declined and suggested that I could possibly go to thirty dollars. Mingmar apologized but said that some Japanese TV crew had paid her this sort of money for an interview and she now refused to talk to anyone who wouldn’t stump up the same sum. Bloody Japanese, they were really ruining this area . . .

  I told him that for 6,000 dollars I wanted an exclusive interview with the Yeti himself. Mingmar laughed but he was obviously a bit embarrassed about the whole affair. He said that she had gone a bit doolally since the attack anyway. The Japanese crew had brought a Yeti costume with them, as they wanted to film a reconstruction of the attack. It turned out that they hadn’t bothered to mention this to the woman in question. When the fake Yeti appeared she went totally mental.

  Realizing that this interview was never going to happen I asked Mingmar if we could go to the monastery. He nodded, pleased to get off the loony-Yeti-attack-woman subject.

  We left the guesthouse and Hermann, who was tied up outside, visibly flinched. I patted him on the head and assured him that his work was over before walking through a maze of waist-high stone walls towards the monastery, which I could see at the top of the village. We passed by locals sitting in the warm sun doing their washing or chopping wood. There was a house whose roof was ripped off in the terrible winds two weeks ago. About ten people were hard at work repairing it and it looked like a sort of Sherpa barn-raising ceremony.

  After five minutes or so we arrived at the monastery, the Khumjung Gomba. A large money stone was positioned right outside the entrance. This was rather appropriate as it turned out that nobody could see the Yeti skull without paying a ‘donation’ to the monastery. This Yeti business was . . . A business. A warty Buddhist monk stood outside the main door and greeted us with a beatific smile as we entered a courtyard filled on three sides with wooden benches and surrounded by cloisters. Mingmar whispered that once a year the whole valley came here for a five-day festival.

  Then an elderly looking man, not in monk clothes, made his way slowly down to greet us. He pointed to a hidden door covered by a golden drape. He lifted the drape and unlocked two stiff padlocks. He opened the door and it creaked open in a rather satisfyingly Scooby Doo manner. We stepped inside behind him. It was a shrine and a rather beautiful one at that. Large multi-coloured Buddhas lined the rear wall and formed the backdrop to the central shrine. Hundreds of sticks of incense burnt everywhere in the room, creating a pungent, mystical fog. On both sides of the room were hundreds of little cubicles in the wall with the edges of prayer cloths hanging down from them. Just to my right an enormous gong hung from the ceiling. Both Mingmar and the old man set about bowing and lighting candles while my eyes darted around the room looking for the elusive Yeti skull. They eventually alighted on a locked lime-green metal cabinet that seemed at odds with everything else in the room. I waited until Mingmar had finished his ritual and then pointed at the cabinet.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Please make a donation.’ He pointed to a slot in the side of the cabinet that I hadn’t spotted before. I pushed a tightly folded 500-rupee note through the slot and the Keeper of the Skull (this appeared to be his title) unlocked the cabinet and dramatically swung open the doors. Inside was a glass box with the words ‘Yeti Scull’ daubed in white paint on the wooden frame. The box had a white silk shawl draped over it. I bent down and lifted the shawl off the box. Inside was a cone-shaped object, about twelve inches high. It looked like someone had lopped the top off the head of a cone-headed animal. The hair was a reddish-brown colour and, on first impression, it looked pretty convincing.

  I asked Mingmar to ask the Keeper whether he could bring the box out of the cabinet. The Keeper said no, we couldn’t touch it; it was forbidden. Mingmar spoke to him for a while and then told me that the Keeper had kindly agreed to get the box out of the cabinet and put it on the top for a mere 200 dollars. I was starting to get a b
it hacked off with the financial nature of anything Yeti. It was an expensive business, this monster business. I told the Keeper of the Skull that for 200 dollars I wanted the case unlocked and for me to be able to put the skull on my head while levitating. Mingmar communicated this to the Keeper, who didn’t seem very amused. We eventually agreed that if I gave 200 rupees to the Keeper personally, as opposed to making a donation, Mingmar would be allowed rotate the skull in the cabinet so that I could photograph and film all sides of it. The Keeper told me that this was a special honour and that I was not to tell anyone, so . . . You didn’t hear it from me.

  It was a bit annoying because I was pretty sure that I remembered footage in the original Arthur C. Clarke TV show in which a much younger Keeper of the Skull danced around the courtyard with it on his head.

  I handed over the money and Mingmar gently rotated the box a full 360 degrees as I snapped away. One side of the skull had a vertical split all the way down it. Mingmar showed me a piece of paper on which was written, in dodgy English, the history of the skull.

  Before the Khumjung monastery was established the peoples of the valley celebrated the festival of Dumji in the village of Thane. A dispute arose over who should organize the festival and the people of Namche, Khunde and Khumjung went it alone with Khumjung chosen to be the new host. As the new hosts it was expected of the people of Thane to give a worthy present in tribute. They gave them the Yetis Scull. They were so offended by this gift that they kicked it all the way home (hence the split) the scull was kept in the monastery and it was only in the twentieth century that its significance was realized.

  I asked the Keeper if he had seen a Yeti. The Keeper said he had never seen a Yeti but he had heard them many times. He said that they sounded like a crying baby and that he often heard them at night. He did the cry for my camera and I have to admit that it was a touch spooky.

  He then told me a story about a local villager who was at 19,600 feet with his Yaks. It started snowing really hard and the man wanted to move down lower into the valley. On the way down he saw a figure ahead of him in the snow. He thought that it was someone from his village and he shouted and the figure stopped. As he approached it the Yaks went crazy with fear and he smelt the creature (you guessed it: it was the Yeti) and it was not a good smell. The creature disappeared into the blizzard. When the man got back to the village he was crazy with fear and got very ill.

  The Keeper now looked at us expectantly, like someone telling a ghost story to a bonfire of Scouts. There was silence for a moment. I wanted to hold the skull in my hands and it wasn’t going to happen. The Keeper locked up the cabinet and ushered us out into the courtyard. We thanked him and he began the long, slow shuffle back up to his cloistered quarters.

  We exited the monastery and walked back down to the square. I had a look round the Hillary School. It was very impressive. Mingmar went up to Khunde to visit his parents and I sat in the sun writing up my notes and soaking up the silence.

  That evening Mingmar returned with his brother, the owner of the guesthouse. It was another freezing night and we sat around the communal stove drinking beer and talking. They told me about their other brother, who had climbed Everest. He had taken photos of a Yeti footprint in the Makalu region -again at the seemingly preferred Yeti altitude of 19,600 feet.

  Then, out of the blue, the brother in front of me started telling me about a trip he’d made up the Holy Mountain the previous October. The ‘Holy Mountain’ is the name for the mountain that stands right behind the village; Western climbers are not allowed on to it.

  The brother told me that they had built a big drinking-water construction project on a ridge on the other side of the Holy Mountain. One night, they were camping up at the site when the temporary water supply that they’d set up stopped working.

  The brother climbed uphill to where they had set up a big water tank, only to find that it had been knocked over. Nearby were a set of huge footprints in the snow, just like the ones his brother had photographed. He said that he took two photos of the tracks on his mobile and then scarpered, as he was very afraid.

  I asked him where the photographs he’d taken were. He said that they were on his computer. I asked him whether I could see them. He nodded and beckoned me through into the family bedroom. In the corner he had an old computer set up on a table. He fired it up and, when the home screen appeared, clicked on a file in the bottom right of the screen. There, on his computer screen, were two photographs of a set of large footprints. They were not the best quality, and he hadn’t put anything next to them for scale, but they were clearly large footprints and he said that they were not of any animal he knew of. I saw no reason for him to lie.

  Back on my night out in Namche, I’d noticed a painted Yak skull in the bar and I had told Mingmar how much I liked it. His brother had one that he’d bought in Tibet and he and Mingmar presented it to me as a present. I was so chuffed: it was a really beautiful thing, painted in yellow with Tibetan script on it.

  I thought about it all night and in the morning I had to tell them that I couldn’t take the painted skull: I’m always bringing stuff back from my travels and I worried that this might well end up being the straw that broke Stacey’s back. Also, I was unsure as to whether I could get a skull through UK customs. Hillary apparently got the Yeti skull back to England with the help of the actor Jimmy Stewart’s private jet. (Stewart happened to be holidaying in India at the time and helped Hillary out.) I had no such high falutin’ assistance (as Jimmy might have said).

  That morning it was crazily cold and there was a heavy frost on the ground. The plan was to walk all the way down to Monjo without a horse. We waited until the sun snuck over the nearest peaks and then set off. I’d rather hoped that Hermann would be waiting outside for me but his owner had retrieved him like a horse thief in the night.

  The first twenty minutes were awful with a steady slog up a set of very steep steps. I huffed and puffed like a big bad wolf but, once we reached the top and passed a little stupa, it was downhill all the way. And I mean downhill. We crossed back over the dirt airstrip and kept going down. We threaded our way through the dwarf-juniper forest dotted with the occasional bulbous rock. Soon – ridiculously soon, in fact – we got to a point overlooking Namche. The view was wonderful but the descent into town was perilously steep and my knees were really starting to hurt as they took all the downhill strain.

  A short history of my left leg

  I suppose I’d better take you through the history of my unlucky left leg as I keep grumbling about it. Back in 1987, when such things might have seemed a touch cooler and I was still sporting guyliner, I was the proud owner of a pink Honda Camino Scooter (49cc). I was on my way down the Gloucester Road to my girlfriend’s house when I overtook a bus and was hit by a Sloaney woman in a Peugeot 205. Her bumper went straight into my left knee and I went flying off the bike and into the doorway of a pub. I ruptured all the ligaments in my knee and had to have quite an operation that left me on crutches for three months. It also left me with quite a cool scar shaped like a question mark that I tell my kids was the result of a great-white shark attack.

  Then, in around 1996, I was on a Greek island called Evia, visiting my lovely sister who lives there. I went with my then girlfriend, who had a PhD, allowing her to call herself ‘Dr’ Burr. (Weirdly, I have dated two PhD ‘doctors’. One, the aforementioned Dr Burr. And the other? Dr Gurr. I kid you not.)

  Anyway I wanted to rent a scooter but the Greek guy at the rental place persuaded me to take a motorbike instead. I had absolutely no idea how to ride a motorbike. We were in the town of Styra and Dr Burr was on the back when we came to a stop at some traffic lights. Dr Burr, who was also unused to motorbikes, started wobbling and the whole bike fell over, crushing my left knee.

  Dr Burr was uninjured but I my kneecap was smashed into four bits. I was forced to fly back to the UK where (proper) doctors wired it up and tried to fuse the thing back together. While recovering in hospital I became
rather attached to a button that would give me a hit of morphine every time I squeezed it. This helped a lot when Dr Burr came to see me in said hospital and dumped me unceremoniously.

  Then, in 2011, I agreed to do Celebrity Total Wipeout in Argentina. For those of you not ‘up’ with shit TV, this is an insane assault-course-type competition where you are thrown into water and bounce off huge red balls for the sadistic pleasure of the viewing public. I agreed to do it because they flew me out to Buenos Aires club class and, as I was going to Antarctica afterwards via Patagonia, it was all going to work out nicely. Sadly, in the qualifying round, I found myself in second place and took an ambitiously competitive leap into the void and landed very, very awkwardly on my left foot, snapping three metatarsals. It’s a wonder, frankly, that I can still walk. And, yes, I am both left-handed and left-footed.

  Anyway, back in Namche, the descent had killed my knee so we stopped in a store that was doing a roaring trade in knee supports and painkillers. I slipped two on and two in and I felt much better. We continued on down towards the river. Ten minutes out of Namche we walked past some panting trekkers.

  ‘Don’t worry, only twenty minutes to go,’ I said to them and they smiled and I smiled back. We were all trekkers together in one big happy trekking world and nobody needed to know anything about my horse problem.

  Then the painkillers kicked in and I felt a bit woozy and evil. We spotted another pair of trekkers struggling up the hill, about thirty minutes away from Namche.

  ‘Keep going – three more hours and you’re in Namche,’ I smiled as they both physically crumbled before my eyes and sat down disheartened on the side of the trail. I walked on feeling no guilt and blaming my behaviour on the drugs and altitude.