Yeti: No mystery at all
To the alpine goat herders in the western Himalaya Mountains of Pakistan and Nepal, who live at altitudes of more than 3,500 meters above sea level, the Yeti is no mystery at all. This is also the case for the corn farmers on the steep slopes just below. They both tell the story about the "abominable snowman" to have fun with foreign tourists and mountaineers or to make some money.
I spent three years as a team leader for the Pakistan-German Forest Development Project in Kaghan Valley, close to Nanga Parbat. I climbed several peaks there including Mount Makra, a rather comfortable climb at approximately 4,000 meters.
Halfway between the mountain's last tall firs of Shogran Forest at 3,500 meters and the top's splendid solitude, I followed the bend of a rocky corner and for a moment was really scared.
A big monkey about 10 meters away cast me a short glance before fleeing across the snow. The footprints left behind were similar to a human being's and, due to the large space between each print, it appeared to be an extremely long legged one with a total height of up to three meters.
The monkey was a male Himalayan Langur or Gray Kashmir Langur, Presbytis entellus Pocock. It is an alpine subspecies of the slightly smaller lowland Langur Presbytis entellus Dufresne. It is found in abundance in India, living within human settlements as it is friendly minded and lacks the aggression of other Macaca species.
The body of my Yeti was about one meter long with a tail, longer than its body, which curved in an arc over its back and pointed to the front. Due to its long legs the body was about 80 centimeters high. It had nice, silvery, rather long-haired fur and a very wide, silvery-white mane around the neck similar to some Baboon species in Africa. This mane indicated that it was a male. Only its small triangle-shaped face was black. It had a striking appearance.
If Reinhold Messner says: "The Yeti is about 2.20 meters tall..." (July 31, 1997) then that poor animal did not have all its limbs on the ground but forcefully pulled up on its forearms by men. And, of course, it never "preys on yaks".
Later, I saw a group of more than 24 monkeys in the Sharan Forest west of Kunhar River, about 2,000 meters from the base of the mountain. They fled along the ground also. These alpine monkeys are exclusively herbivorous, peaceful and very, very shy.
This peaceful "White Monkey" lives in lowland India, where it is not shy but often accustomed to hand-feeding. I suppose it could have been the original model for the helpful Hanuman, the White Monkey in the Ramayana epic.
HERWIG ZAHORKA
Bogor, West Java