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Created: 28 November 2005

30 Oct 2000 INDIA:

BIG FOOT PURSUIT ONE LEGEND GOES AFTER ANOTHER IN THE SNOWY EXPANSE OF THE HIMALAYAS.
By SUMAN DUBEY.

What happens when two legends meet? One, from the real world, the first man to reach the summit of Mt Everest without using bottled oxygen, the first to climb all 14 mountains higher than 8,000 metres, and arguably the most accomplished mountaineer alive. The other, a creature of the wild, unseen
and uncaught, yet all pervasive in the lore of the Himalayas and Tibet, a riddle without as yet an acknowledged reality. Such an encounter can only be momentous-and this vivid and gripping account of it doesn't disappoint. Reinhold Messner is not only a great explorer and climber, he is an
accomplished storyteller. His books, about a dozen by now, are memorable not only for the feats they describe but the manner in which they do so. His search for the yeti has the suspense of a mystery and the thrill of an adventure. Most expeditions that set out to find the mythical hairy beast who had left footprints for many to see but had never itself been sighted, returned empty-handed, rich in theory but poor on fact. Messner has actually attempted an answer to the question that has dogged them all: Does the yeti exist? Messner's interest in the yeti emerges from a mid-1986 encounter with an animal in the jungles of eastern Tibet somewhere near the upper reaches of the Mekong river. Messner was transfixed by the first, fleeting appearance of the "apparition", as he calls it. He didn't have the presence of mind to photograph it, but it had left a footprint that was suggestive of a yeti's footprint photographed by another great Himalayan explorer, Eric Shipton, in 1951. Then, pushing on through the forest, he saw it again. And the legend of the yeti took over: It stood over 7 ft tall, it seemed to change shape the longer he stared at it, and it ran with a power and agility no human could match.
That was the beginning of Messner's quest. It was never far from his thoughts, as he made one remarkable climb or exploration after another. Following the 1986 encounter, he made no fewer than 21 explorations which he describes as "yeti research expeditions" before presenting his findings to
the world of science in late 1998. Everywhere he went, from the Karakoram to Bhutan, from Nepal to eastern Tibet, Messner came across countless people who had stories to tell about the yeti. Those who claimed to have seen it unfailingly described it as walking on two feet, unlike bears which move on all fours, taller than a man, hairy, and capable of great strength and speed. In monasteries and elsewhere, Messner was shown relics said to be of yetis', but, as with the famous scalp at
Pangboche monastery in Solo Khumbu in the Everest region, they turned out to be something else. He also corresponded with a German explorer and zoologist sent by Nazi Germany to incite the Tibetans against the British before World War II who in the process also searched for the yeti. Finally, in the
summer of 1997, Messner was able to photograph a yeti-like creature in the Karakorams, and he felt ready to knit all the pieces of his research together.