Seeking the yeti, mythical monster of Nepal, Tibet, India and Bhutan - Lonely Planet Seeking the yeti, mythical monster of Nepal, Tibet, India and Bhutan Tips & articles Lonely Planet Writer Everyone has heard the stories. The grizzled mountaineer who stumbles from his tent high in the Himalaya to find enormous footprints in the snow. The lone trekker who spots a strange figure, standing upright on two legs, silhouetted against the mist on a remote mountain pass. Welcome to the mysterious world of the yeti… Yeti fans in South Beach, San Francisco. Image by hillary h / CC BY-SA 2.0 Despite numerous expeditions to track down this elusive creature, evidence for the abominable snowman – the name given to the beast by a journalist for the Calcutta Statesman in 1921 – has always been tantalisingly circumstantial: photographed footprints; strange hairs caught on tree branches; folk stories told by Sherpa yak herders. Even genetic tests on alleged yeti body parts preserved by monks in remote Himalayan monasteries have so far failed to provide evidence to support the yeti legend. But science is pushing back the boundaries.

In a recent study by geneticist Bryan Sykes from Oxford University, yeti hairs collected from Ladakh and Bhutan were found to contain DNA with remarkable similarities to a prehistoric polar bear that became extinct 40,000 years ago. So is the yeti a giant prehistoric bear? Head to the right valleys in the Himalaya and you might be the one to find out. To help you on your way, here is Lonely Planet’s guide for would-be yeti spotters. The approach to Mount Everest, Nepal. Image by lampertron / CC BY-ND 2.0 Close encounters in Nepal Nepal is where most of the high profile yeti encounters have taken place, thanks mainly to the presence of large numbers of intrepid mountaineers, roaming far beyond regions of human habitation on the approach route to Mount Everest. Perhaps the most famous encounter of all came in 1951, when British mountaineer Eric Shipton snapped his now-legendary photographs of yeti footprints on a reconnaissance trek through the Rolwaling Himal.

If you can’t stretch to a full Everest expedition (average price US$48,000), set your sights a little lower on the Buddhist monastery of Tengboche in Solukhumbu , where older monks tell tales of a ferocious yeti attack on the monastery yaks in the years before trekkers came to Nepal. As the most important place of worship for the Sherpas of Solukhumbu, Tengboche is the ideal place to start the search for a beast that is largely known from Sherpa legends. Tengboche Gompa, Solukhumbu, Nepal. Image by Tim Draper / Getty Images A similarly gruesome yeti attack is said to have taken place in 1974 in the village of Machhermo, several days northwest of Tengboche on the trekking route to Gokyo, where a local woman numbered amongst the victims. On the trek to Machhermo, you can detour to the monastery at Khumjung, on the plateau above Namche Bazaar, where what is said to be the scalp of a yeti is kept as a sacred relic in a locked box, following high profile thefts of yeti relics from other monasteries.

Alternatively, you could head northeast from Tengboche through glorious rhododendron forests to Pangboche, where famous relics of a yeti hand and skull were stored until 1991, when they were stolen and allegedly passed to a wealthy anonymous collector. In fact, parts of the relic were stolen some years earlier, when Peter Byrne, a member of the 1957 Slick Expedition to Everest, swapped bones from the yeti hand for human bones, and smuggled the original bones back to England for analysis in a convoluted plot involving the actor Jimmy Stewart. The test results were inconclusive. The Khumjung yeti scalp, Khumjung Gompa, Nepal. Image by John Mock / Getty Images Hunting the yeti in Tibet-y Tibet is the ultimate source of all yeti legends, which were transmitted across the Himalaya by wandering Buddhist monks. Ancient Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts tell of a shaggy beast that roams the high passes of the Himalaya, slaughtering livestock, walking upright like a man and making a fearsome whistling sound.

Known variously as yeti (‘man-like animal’), metoh-kangmi (‘foul-smelling snowman’) or chemo (‘big bear’), this elusive monster is almost universally accepted as a real creature by mountain communities in Tibet. The north face of Everest, Tibet. Image by Göran Höglund (Kartläsarn) / CC BY 2.0 The mountaineer Reinhold Messner – not the most likely person to fabricate stories of supernatural encounters – had his own face-off with a yeti while trekking alone on a Sherpa trail from Dege to Lhasa in 1986. This fleeting encounter with a shaggy creature that stood upright and made a terrifying whistling noise inspired a 12-year quest to uncover the truth about the yeti, recorded in his book My Quest for the Yeti. After more than a decade of searching, Messner concluded that the yeti was some hitherto unknown species of bear, transformed into a supernatural being in local myths and legends. Asiatic black bear in the Himalaya.

Image by flowcomm / CC BY 2.0 Even the Nazis took an interest in the yeti, backing a scientific expedition to Tibet by the zoologist Ernst Schäfer in 1939 in the misguided hope that the yeti might prove to be the origin of the Aryan race. Encounters are still being reported. Russian scientist Professor Arkady Tishkov recorded a yeti sighting in 1991 while on a glaciological survey mission on the slopes of Mount Shishapangma on the Nepal-Tibet border. For your own Tibetan encounter, try your luck on the Tibetan flank of Everest or the remote valleys of Kham on the border with Sichuan in China. Meeting the migoi in Bhutan Bhutan has the unusual distinction of being the only country with a national park dedicated to the preservation of the yeti, known locally as migoi or migyur (‘wild man’), and one of the two yeti hair samples used in the Sykes study was collected in this region.

Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, a remote 740-square-mile sanctuary in the east of the country, is home to many endangered species, including red pandas, snow leopards and tigers, so there’s plenty to watch out for, even if the migoi fails to put in an appearance. According to an official report from park wardens, migoi were also spotted in Thrumshingla National Park in central Bhutan in 2012. Mythical Creatures Mythical Creatures History has been filled with mythical and unexplained creatures. This page is dedicated to some of them... Demons Chupacabras. Well you learn something new everyday - at least I seem to. I always thought that "Chuppies" were native to Chile but apparently they can be found ( if that is the correct term for a mythical creature ) all over the Americas. Chupacabra means "Goat Sucker". Typically signs of a Chuppy's visit consist of animals drained of blood and with puncture wounds visible on their bodies. The puncture wounds are much larger than would be expected from vampire bats. Recently there has been a reported attack on a human near Parral ( Chile ).

This individual was hospitalised and the wounds were not consistent with attack by any known animal. The individual claims to have been a attacked by two unidentified creatures with dogs faces and wings. Depending on time and available sources a lot more about these troublesome creatures should appear here relatively shortly. Demons. Guazzo's Compendium Meleficarum (1608) gives six families, or genera, of demons. Fiery These are those demons who dwell in the upper air and will not touch ground or cause trouble until the Last Judgement. Aerial These are the devils that stir up the atmosphere and cause turbulence, storms, hurricanes, and thundering tempests as they try to destroy mankind. They may descend into Hell and they will make themselves visible to humans if called upon to do so. Terrestrial These live in forests, glens and knolls where they lay in wait for unexpecting passers-by. They are most likely to be found in a lonely field or behind a rocky outpost, giving false directions to lost travellers. These are the most common; living secretly among people, mimicking their habits and befriending them in order to learn their darkest secrets and betray them.

Aqueous These are found in oceans, rivers, and streams, they raise storms at sea, sink ships, and drown swimmers. Associated with mermaids and the sirens from the Iliad, they frequently appear in seductive female forms. Their leader is the ignominious beast Leviathan. Subterranean This batch of demons lives in caves and caverns and harasses miners and other workers who toil beneath the earth. They are the source of earthquakes, wildfire, and dry, hot winds that scourge the earth. Heliophobic The final breed of demons are the most malicious. Homicidal and merciless, these demons only appear at night and, with one blast of their noxious, icy breath, will kill a person who has the misfortune of running into them. Ahrimanes : angels that followed their leader, Ahriman, to stage a revolt against the principle of good, known as Orzud or Ormazd in Persian mythology. Ahriman and his followers were expelled and went to live on earth, where they were rejected. As revenge, Ahrimanes injured the earth's inhabitants. They now live in the space between the stars and the earth.

Beast 666 : According to the book of Revelation, the end of the world will be heralded by the unleashing of a horrible demon into the world. In one final, desperate attempt to reassert himself, the Devil will send a false prophet - the Antichrist - and the Beast 666, a ferocious apocalyptic creature who rises from the sea ridden by the whore of Babylon. The Beast will lay waste to all around it, visiting plague and destruction on the lives of mankind and defeating the power of the saints. In time, the Beast will be accompanied by the false prophet, or Antichrist, who will trick people into believing that he is the Messiah. According to the prophecy, the Day of Reckoning will dawn in a place called Armageddon: the false prophet, the Beast 666, and the legions of evil will do battle with the Son of God, seated 'faithful and true' upon his dazzling white horse, and an army from heaven bedecked in gleaming white linen.

In the long awaited final triumph of good over evil, Judgment Day will come and the false prophet and Beast 666 will be captured and hurled into a boiling lake of fire and brimstone. The Devil will be chained and locked in Hell for a term of a thousand years, and all true believers who refused to succumb to the Beast will be saved. Djinns : Also known as jinns or ginii, thay can be good or bad. The tendency of the evil Djinns' to enter a human through the mouth or nose, going straight for the head to drive their victims mad has led to the superstitious practice of covering one's mouth when yawning or coughing and saying 'gesundheit' or 'God Bless You' when another sneezes. The good ones are of the type found in �Aladins Lamp� and can be persuaded to grant favors and wishes. They are also related to the div, another band of Persian monstrosities. Elves : Related to and often confused with fairies and goblins, elves are created from the root of the magical mandrake plant. If treated well, they can be wonderful helpmates, amassing great wealth and power for their master.

If treated cruelly, an elf will see that its owner gets his or her just desserts - often in a violently grotesque fashion. Occasionally, elves colaborate with witches, especially in swapping one of their own children, otherwise known as changelings, with newborn human infants. Fairies : Fairies, known in different parts of the world as nymphs, little people, trolls, or spirits, these creatures play a vital role in popular superstitions. Their origins are most likely pagan, and thus they have been demonized by organized religions. As a group, they are usually deminutive and capricious, as likely to lend a hand as they are to torment and tease. For the most part, these entities live in the natural places they protect: trees, fields, forests, rivers, banks, brigdes, and stony ledges for example. They are easily whipped into a fury if proper respect is not paid to their home, but their wrath can be avoided with gifts of food, flowers or coins. The adore lovers, music, dance, and laughter, but once crossed can be vicious enemies. They are often responsible when something is missing, as they look at any human possession as fair game.

The more malicious kinds will kill or maim a human, but only if the person stupidly blunders into their territory without heeding their rules or paving the way with a smail gift. The can be warded off with iron or steel since they abhor any element of industry or violence. According to some, these little people are actually fallen angels who were saved from Hell by Christ. As the angels fell, Christ lifted his hand to stop the least responsible beings at the earth's surface, thus some vestige of goodness has remained in them. Fates : The three hags memorialized in Homer's Odyssey. One spins the yarn of a person's life, one measures its length, and the last snips it off with her sharp shears. The demonologist Alphonsus de Spina believed the fates were not real women but demons. Ghouls :Also known as ghosts, ghouls tend to haunt graveyards and unearth the freshly buried. In some Middle Eastern cultures, ghouls were thought to devour small children and corpses. These undead creatures also like dark lonely places such as mountain tops and windswept plains.

Legend has it that dogs can see ghouls, which is why they occasionally bark at what appears to be nothing to the human eye. If you want to see a ghoul, stand behind a dog and look between its two ears down the middle of its head. Gremlins : Generally good-natured, gremlins usually behave badly when they are pulling a prank. Gremlins are goblins that haunt the air, traumatizing pilots and air travelers by suddenly swooping up from their underground pits around airports and landing strips and grabbing a plane's wing. They are green in colour and covered with mossy hair, and they use their webbed feet to suction onto airplanes and other industrial machines. They empty full fuel tanks, disorient the gauges in the cockpit, and cause turbulence. An old wives' tale claims that when you hear thunder, the rumbling comes from the gremlins' favorite pastime, sky bowling. As technology advances, gremlins have found new arenas in which to play their tricks; computers, telephones, and televisions are only a few of the modern machines they now haunt. Harpies :The harpies are hags from Hell, vicious shrews repulsive to behold.

They torment their victim with unearthly screeches and wails, all the while scratching eyes out and tearing flesh with their hideously long fingernails. The Harpies were originally storm goddesses in ancient Greece or, some believe, aspects of the death goddess. Later myths depicted them as "body snatchers". Their number varied, up to eight (or even more). As "snatchers" they were described as monsters with female heads (fair-haired), claws, bear's ears, and vulture-like bodies. Other sources tell that the Harpies are hags from Hell, vicious shrews repulsive to behold. They torment their victim with unearthly screeches and wails, all the while scratching eyes out and tearing flesh with their hideously long fingernails. Ladies of the night, Harpies may initially take the form of beautiful women to seduce their victims into lustfulness; but inevitably, as passions mount, they will suddenly reveal themselves, more often than not causing the death of their victims. The wailing banshee that visits an Irish family to announce an impending death is a commonly seen Harpie.

Hellhound : The three-headed guard dog of the gates of Hell, the Hellhound is related to the Roman dog Cerberus who stood at the entrance to Hades. The Hellhound accompanies the Devil on his night hunts and the heads are supposedly a parody of the Holy Trinity. Hobgoblins or Goblins : Related to fairies and other little devils, goblins or cobolds, are predominant in England and Ireland. They are sooty-faced, hirsute creatures who loiter around rural villages and farmhouses causing trouble for the folks they live with. Blowing out hearth fires, knotting up ropes, and undoing chores are only a few examples of the pesky tricks these demons play. Their acts are hardly ever fatal, and if they happen to be in the mood, goblins will occasionally complete a task left undone. Imps or Familiars : Imps take the form of small animals, rodents, insects or frog-like creatures. They are the errand-boys of witches, who send them off to execute a particular spell or charm.

Because they are small, they are easily kept in boxes, bottles or pockets and they are suckled by Witches on a third teat, otherwise known as the Devil's Mark. Incubi : An Incubus, meaning 'to lie on' is one of a horde of demons who take human shape and descend on sleeping women in the middle of the night, either raping them or inspiring lustful dreams and desires.Nuns and maidens are often the victims of the incubus's visit, and a pregnancy in a convent is usually the result of such a visit. Copulation with an incubus, reports claim, is a decidedly disgusting affair. The entity allegedly sports an immense frozen penis that he uses to tear viciously into the internal organs of his victims. If, as unbelievable as it may seem, a woman invites an incubus to her bed, all members in the household will fall into a trancelike sleep, even the woman's mortal lover who may be snoring alongside her. In the Middle Ages, any baby born with a mental of physical deformity was considered to be the progeny of this vile union. Knockers : Knockers are yet another tribe of little people who torment miners working underground in tunnels and caves.

If a worker happens to catch site of a Knocker or approach one, legend has it that he will come down with a painful rheumatism. If left alone, Knockers are generally considered harmless. Luciferge : These hideous demons roam the earth searching for souls to kidnap and bring down to Hell. Equipped with razor-sharp talons and beaks the use to tear the soul from its body, they are the henchmen that come to collect on a deal made with the Devil. Their counterparts, the Malebranche, torment some of the worst sinners in Hell. These unnatural beasts have snakes coming out of their noses and ears and sport cloven hooves and tails like their beloved leader. When a doomed individual takes his last breath, the Malebranche leap on his soul with whoops of joy and carry it off to its horrible fate in a cloud of stinking, sulfurous smoke. Mourners present at the moment of death have been known to catch a whiff of the telltale odor of damnation. Nightmare or Mares : Waking with shortness of breath or heaviness in the chest is evidence of a visit by a nightmare demon.

These heinous creatures attack at night, sitting on a person's chest and breathing putrid breath into their nostrils.Their exhaust causes horrible dreams; and if the person awakes while the demon is still present, he or she will be paralyzed under the weight of the monster. Poltergeists : Also called 'jumping demons', these creatures reside in people's homes and play irritating tricks at night breaking dishes, hiding belongings, shaking walls, and turning lights and stereos off and on. They also like to creep up and rip the covers off sleeping victims or stand at the edge of the bed and tickle the bottoms of feet. Occasionally a poltergeist gets violent, resulting in injury to their victims or, more rarely, death. For the most part, however, poltergeists are harmless, albeit irksome and often terrifying household pests. Succubi : The female counterpart of the incubus, a succubus (meaning 'to lie under') attacks innocent men in their sleep. The denizens of Lilith, succubi sit astride a man's prone body and have their way with him. Often taking the form of beautiful women, succubi will instantly turn into miserable hags if confronted with their real identities.

In the Middle Ages, fearful monks tied crucifixes to their genitals before retiring at night as protection against nocturnal visits by succubi. Vampires : A ruthless group of undead who surface only at night to suck the blood of the living. Once mortal, these corpses were raised from the dead and granted eternal life by the forces of evil; the catch is they must drink fresh, warm blood in order to survive. They have the ability to transform themselves into many forms - bats, rats, wolves, shadows, even a sinister, creeping fog. Annals of vampiric legend and lore have been collected throughout the ages, and there have been many eyewitness accounts of their existence. In what could be called vampiric tradition, certain Black Masses reportedly profane the Eucharist by celebrating a ceremony in which worshippers drink human blood from a gold vessel. Werewolves : Lumped in the same category as vampires due to their ability to change shape, their nighttime proclivity, and their fondness for human flesh, werewolves are half-human, half-wolf creatures that have a penchant for juicy young maidens and farmers' livestock They are especially powerful during full moons and occasionally stalk their victims in packs.

In some traditions, one can become a werewolf by petitioning the Devil. In others, those bitten by a werewolf will metamorphose into one too. Werewolves return to their human form at dawn, so it is impossible for most normal folks to know who is and who isn't... Zombies : Living corpses who find their origin in West Indian, Caribbean, and Voodoo legend, zombies are used by evildoers as servants. The zombie is actually a poor soul that, having just been buried, in unable to move peacefully into the afterlife because it is called forth by someone on earth. Once it answers, the zombie climbs out of its fleshly dug grave to heed its master's call, obeying whatever commands the master makes. To ensure that their loved ones get safely into the afterlife, many West Indian cultures bury their dead face down, with their mouths full of dirt and their lips shut. Dragons The Chinese Dragon. The Eastern dragon is considered to be a divine mythical creature that brings good fortune and prosperity.

The nine major characteristics of a lung type dragon include a camel's head with large canine teeth in the upper jaw and long, tendril-like whiskers extending from either side of its mouth, deer's horns, hare's eyes, bull's ears, iguana's neck, frog's belly, carp's scales, and tiger's paws with eagle's claws. Lake Monsters. There are nine basic types of monster. Merhorse : Large eyed with smooth skin and a mane and between 40 and 100 feet in length. Multi-Humped : Similar to a whale but with several humps and from 50 to 100 feet long. Long Necked : Small headed with four flippers and between 30 and 70 feet long. Multi-Finned : Whale like but with a dorsal and multiple fins. From 50 to 70 feet in length. Super Otter : Long tailed giant otter type creature typically beige or grey in colour. Marine Saurian : resembling an alligator or crocodile with scales, a long head and tail. Super Eel : Any eel like creature that has no limbs and a length between 20 and 100 feet.

Father of All Turtles : abnormally huge turtle. Yellow Belly : a 60 to 100 foot long yellow tadpole shaped creature with a black stripe. At the moment this page is sorted by country and merely shows the name and / or location of monster sightings. Argentina Nyami Nyami Lake Kariba Zambezi River Loch Ness Monster. There are many reported pics of "Nessie" but I particularly like this one because of the ease with which I managed to add a mate so she wouldn't be so lonely. I'm not saying that all of the pics are false but this one definitely resembles the trunk of an elephant. There is definitely something strange which apparently has visited the Loch and been filmed. It is highly unlikely that it is a survivor of an otherwise extinct species of dinosaur or that it looks anything like the popular triple humped animal depicted in the media. There have been several alleged photographs and film footage taken of objects in Loch Ness but only one of them, to my knowledge, remains unexplained. Along with the film footage and an unexplained Sonar reading of a large fast moving sub aqua body it must be said that further investigations are needed.

Perhaps by trying to solve the mystery of the sightings rather than find the monster it may be possible to find a different angle to approach the problem from. Lets also look at the Loch Ness mystery in another way, mathematically, or to make it sound a little bit more interesting lets have a look at the "odds". Estimating Loch Ness to be 24 miles long, one mile wide and one mile deep it would have a volume of 3.5 x 1012 cu ft... assuming that the monster is 100 ft long, 20 ft high and 20 ft wide it would be 4 x 104 cu ft equivalent to approx. 1.13 x 10-8 of the Loch... ... that is 1 / 88,318,771. To put this into context it would take nearly 90 million blue whales to fill the Loch. From most reports it would seem that the monster is more likely to be in the range of 30 x 10 x 10 ft and would therefore be one trillionth of the volume of the Loch. Orang Pendek. meaning 'Little Man of the Forest'.

lived in the mythology of tribespeople in Western Sumatra could provide valuable clues to the link between humans and apes. People who have spotted the creature on the island describe it as being 5-feet tall with chocolatey-brown, orange hair. It has a human-like gait and walks upright on its back legs without the aid of its front fists. In 2001 Sanderson, Davies, and Towley spent three weeks in the rainforests of Sumatra tracking the creature. "We didn't see the creature ourselves but we tracked it for several weeks and we managed to make a plaster cast of one of its footprints. "It is absolutely perfect and experts are already beginning to get excited about it." A cast of the footprint and strands of coarse hair are being sent to research institutes at Oxford University and the University of Canberra in Australia for verification. Despite the potential scepticism for such a find, the group hope that DNA testing will prove the existence of a previously undiscovered primate.

Mr Sanderson added: "It doesn't matter who you are, you could be a scientist with nine letters behind your name or you could go with a packed lunch and a camera for a day trip, if you happen to be in the right place at the right time then you can get lucky." As of September 2002 the samples it was reported tha the samples had not yet been positively identified. Hans Brunner, from Deakin University, Melbourne, has tested hair samples found against several species, i.e. orang-utan, chimpanzee, gorilla, sun bear, red leaf monkey, pigtail macaque, Malaysian tapir and human hair but was unabe to find any match as yet. Dr Colin Groves, Professor of primatology at University of Canberra, Australia has also been working on the findings from Sumatra by analysing a footprint found on the expedition. He is not however willing to make his findings public until Mr Brunner releases a scientific paper on the hair analysis. Sasquatch The Sasquatch, or Big Foot is considered by some to be an American equivalent of the Yeti.

While it is similar in the way that they are both large hairy anthropods there are suggestions that one is animal based and the other human based. Sea Monsters. There are nine basic types of monster. Merhorse : Large eyed with smooth skin and a mane and between 40 and 100 feet in length. Multi-Humped : Similar to a whale but with several humps and from 50 to 100 feet long. Long Necked : Small headed with four flippers and between 30 and 70 feet long. Multi-Finned : Whale like but with a dorsal and multiple fins. From 50 to 70 feet in length. Super Otter : Long tailed giant otter type creature typically beige or grey in colour. Marine Saurian : resembling an alligator or crocodile with scales, a long head and tail. Super Eel : Any eel like creature that has no limbs and a length between 20 and 100 feet. Father of All Turtles : abnormally huge turtle. Yellow Belly : a 60 to 100 foot long yellow tadpole shaped creature with a black stripe.

Atlantic Ocean Tracking the mythical monster, the yeti :: Lonely Planet India Tracking the mythical monster, the yeti by Joe Bindloss (Lonely Planet Author) June 23 2015 Image courtesy: Flickr/hillary h/CC BY-SA 2.0 Everyone has heard the stories – the grizzled mountaineer stumbles from his tent high in the Himalaya to find enormous footprints in the snow; the lone trekker who spots a strange figure, standing upright on two legs, silhouetted against the mist on a remote mountain pass. Welcome to the mysterious world of the yeti… Despite numerous expeditions to track down this elusive creature, evidence for the abominable snowman – the name given to the beast by a journalist for the Calcutta Statesman in 1921 – has always been tantalisingly circumstantial: photographed footprints; strange hairs caught on tree branches; folk stories told by Sherpa yak herders. Even genetic tests on alleged yeti body parts preserved by monks in remote Himalayan monasteries have so far failed to provide evidence to support the yeti legend. But science is pushing back the boundaries.

In a recent study by geneticist Bryan Sykes from Oxford University, yeti hairs collected from Ladakh and Bhutan were found to contain DNA with remarkable similarities to a prehistoric polar bear that became extinct 40,000 years ago. So is the yeti a giant prehistoric bear? Head to the right valleys in the Himalaya and you might be the one to find out. To help you on your way, here is Lonely Planet’s guide for would-be yeti spotters. Image courtesy: Flickr/lampertron/CC BY-ND 2.0 Close encounters in Nepal Nepal is where most of the high profile yeti encounters have taken place, thanks mainly to the presence of large numbers of intrepid mountaineers, roaming far beyond regions of human habitation on the approach route to Mount Everest. Perhaps the most famous encounter of all came in 1951, when British mountaineer Eric Shipton snapped his now-legendary photographs of yeti footprints on a reconnaissance trek through the Rolwaling Himal.

If you can’t stretch to a full Everest expedition set your sights a little lower on the Buddhist monastery of Tengboche in Solukhumbu, where older monks tell tales of a ferocious yeti attack on the monastery yaks in the years before trekkers came to Nepal. As the most important place of worship for the Sherpas of Solukhumbu, Tengboche is the ideal place to start the search for a beast that is largely known from Sherpa legends. Tengboche Gompa, Solukhumbu, Nepal. Image courtesy: Flickr/Frank Kehren/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 A similarly gruesome yeti attack is said to have taken place in 1974 in the village of Machhermo, several days northwest of Tengboche on the trekking route to Gokyo, where a local woman numbered amongst the victims. On the trek to Machhermo, you can detour to the monastery at Khumjung, on the plateau above Namche Bazaar, where what is said to be the scalp of a yeti is kept as a sacred relic in a locked box, following high profile thefts of yeti relics from other monasteries.

Alternatively, you could head northeast from Tengboche through glorious rhododendron forests to Pangboche, where famous relics of a yeti hand and skull were stored until 1991, when they were stolen and allegedly passed to a wealthy anonymous collector. In fact, parts of the relic were stolen some years earlier, when Peter Byrne, a member of the 1957 Slick Expedition to Everest, swapped bones from the yeti hand for human bones, and smuggled the original bones back to England for analysis in a convoluted plot involving the actor Jimmy Stewart. The test results were inconclusive. The Khumjung yeti scalp, Khumjung Gompa, Nepal. Image courtesy: Flickr/simonsimages/CC BY 2.0 Hunting the yeti in Tibet Tibet is the ultimate source of all yeti legends, which were transmitted across the Himalaya by wandering Buddhist monks. Ancient Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts tell of a shaggy beast that roams the high passes of the Himalaya, slaughtering livestock, walking upright like a man and making a fearsome whistling sound.

Known variously as yeti (‘man-like animal’), metoh-kangmi (‘foul-smelling snowman’) or chemo (‘big bear’), this elusive monster is almost universally accepted as a real creature by mountain communities in Tibet. The north face of Everest, Tibet. Image courtesy: Flickr/Göran Höglund (Kartläsarn)/CC BY 2.0 The mountaineer Reinhold Messner – not the most likely person to fabricate stories of supernatural encounters – had his own face-off with a yeti while trekking alone on a Sherpa trail from Dege to Lhasa in 1986. This fleeting encounter with a shaggy creature that stood upright and made a terrifying whistling noise inspired a 12-year quest to uncover the truth about the yeti, recorded in his book My Quest for the Yeti. After more than a decade of searching, Messner concluded that the yeti was some hitherto unknown species of bear, transformed into a supernatural being in local myths and legends. Asiatic black bear in the Himalaya.

Image courtesy: Flickr/flowcomm/CC BY 2.0 Even the Nazis took an interest in the yeti, backing a scientific expedition to Tibet by the zoologist Ernst Schäfer in 1939 in the misguided hope that the yeti might prove to be the origin of the Aryan race. Encounters are still being reported. Russian scientist Professor Arkady Tishkov recorded a yeti sighting in 1991 while on a glaciological survey mission on the slopes of Mount Shishapangma on the Nepal-Tibet border. For your own Tibetan encounter, try your luck on the Tibetan flank of Everest or the remote valleys of Kham on the border with Sichuan in China. Meeting the migoi in Bhutan Bhutan has the unusual distinction of being the only country with a national park dedicated to the preservation of the yeti, known locally as migoi or migyur (‘wild man’), and one of the two yeti hair samples used in the Sykes study was collected in this region.

Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, a remote 740-square-mile sanctuary in the east of the country, is home to many endangered species, including red pandas, snow leopards and tigers, so there’s plenty to watch out for, even if the migoi fails to put in an appearance. According to an official report from park wardens, migoi were also spotted in Thrumshingla National Park in central Bhutan in 2012. Mount Khangchendzonga, Sikkim. Image courtesy: Flickr/teckky/CC BY-SA 2.0 India’s yeti encounters Like its Himalayan neighbours, India has its share of yeti legends. Mountaineer Peter Bryne, who colluded in the theft of bones from the Pangboche yeti hand, found yeti footprints in Sikkim in 1948. Other encounters are even older. In the first century AD, Roman traveller Pliny the Elder wrote of a man-like creature that walks on two legs in the mountains of India. Then there is B.H. Hodgeson’s encounter with a mysterious ‘mountain ape’ in Bengal in 1832, which kicked off the whole Western love affair with the yeti.

Start your own quest in the mountains of Ladakh, where the second hair sample that identified the yeti as a prehistoric bear was collected by a French hunter in the 1970s. The article was originally published on lonelyplanet.com. AUTHOR'S BIO: Joe Bindloss is Lonely Planet's South Asia Destination Editor. He tweets from @joe_planet. British scientist 'solves' mystery of Himalayan yetis - BBC News BBC News British scientist 'solves' mystery of Himalayan yetis 17 October 2013 Close share panel Media captionProfessor Bryan Sykes: "Yeti hairs genetically identical to polar bear" Research by a British scientist has concluded that the legendary Himalayan yeti may in fact be a sub-species of brown bear. DNA tests on hair samples carried out by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes found that they matched those from an ancient polar bear. He subjected the hairs to the most advanced tests available. He says the most likely explanation for the myth is that the animal is a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears. Prof Sykes told the BBC that there may be a real biological animal behind the yeti myth. "I think this bear, which nobody has seen alive,...

may still be there and may have quite a lot of polar bear in it," he said. "It may be some sort of hybrid and if its behaviour is different from normal bears, which is what eyewitnesses report, then I think that may well be the source of the mystery and the source of the legend." Prof Sykes conducted the DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh - in northern India on the west of the Himalayas - and the other from Bhutan, 1,285km (800 miles) further east. The results were then compared with the genomes of other animals that are stored on a database of all published DNA sequences. Image caption Suspected yeti footprints - such as these in Nepal - are regularly photographed Prof Sykes found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely related brown bear were separating as different species. The species are closely related and are known to interbreed where their territories overlap.

The sample from Ladakh came from the mummified remains of a creature shot by a hunter around 40 years ago, while the second sample was in the form of a single hair, found in a bamboo forest by an expedition of filmmakers around 10 years ago. Prof Sykes said that his results were "completely unexpected" and that more work needed to be done interpreting them. He said that while they did not mean that "ancient polar bears are wandering around the Himalayas", there could be a sub-species of brown bear in the High Himalayas descended from an ancestor of the polar bear. "Or it could mean there has been more recent hybridisation between the brown bear and the descendant of the ancient polar bear," he said. In 2008 scientists in the US examined hairs given to the BBC which some had claimed were from a yeti. The scientists concluded that in fact the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - belonged to a species of Himalayan goat known as a Himalayan Goral.

Seeking The Yeti, Mythical Monster Of Nepal, Tibet, India And Bhutan Seeking The Yeti, Mythical Monster Of Nepal, Tibet, India And Bhutan View Comments Approach to Mt Everest Pic: lampertron / CC BY-ND 2.0Everyone has heard the stories. The grizzled mountaineer who stumbles from his tent high in the Himalaya to find enormous footprints in the snow. The lone trekker who spots a strange figure, standing upright on two legs, silhouetted against the mist on a remote mountain pass. Welcome to the mysterious world of the yeti… Despite numerous expeditions to track down this elusive creature, evidence for the abominable snowman – the name given to the beast by a journalist for the Calcutta Statesman in 1921 – has always been tantalisingly circumstantial: photographed footprints; strange hairs caught on tree branches; folk stories told by Sherpa yak herders. Even genetic tests on alleged yeti body parts preserved by monks in remote Himalayan monasteries have so far failed to provide evidence to support the yeti legend. Yeti fans in south beach san francisco Pic: LonelyPlanet/hillary h/ But science is pushing back the boundaries.

In a recent study by geneticist Bryan Sykes from Oxford University, yeti hairs collected from Ladakh and Bhutan were found to contain DNA with remarkable similarities to a prehistoric polar bear that became extinct 40,000 years ago. So is the yeti a giant prehistoric bear? Head to the right valleys in the Himalaya and you might be the one to find out. To help you on your way, here is Lonely Planet’s guide for would-be yeti spotters. Close encounters in Nepal Nepal is where most of the high profile yeti encounters have taken place, thanks mainly to the presence of large numbers of intrepid mountaineers, roaming far beyond regions of human habitation on the approach route to Mount Everest. Perhaps the most famous encounter of all came in 1951, when British mountaineer Eric Shipton snapped his now-legendary photographs of yeti footprints on a reconnaissance trek through the Rolwaling Himal.

If you can’t stretch to a full Everest expedition (average price US$48,000), set your sights a little lower on the Buddhist monastery of Tengboche in Solukhumbu, where older monks tell tales of a ferocious yeti attack on the monastery yaks in the years before trekkers came to Nepal. As the most important place of worship for the Sherpas of Solukhumbu, Tengboche is the ideal place to start the search for a beast that is largely known from Sherpa legends. A similarly gruesome yeti attack is said to have taken place in 1974 in the village of Machhermo, several days northwest of Tengboche on the trekking route to Gokyo, where a local woman numbered amongst the victims. On the trek to Machhermo, you can detour to the monastery at Khumjung, on the plateau above Namche Bazaar, where what is said to be the scalp of a yeti is kept as a sacred relic in a locked box, following high profile thefts of yeti relics from other monasteries.

Khumjung yeti scalp Pic: LonelyPlant/Getty ImagesAlternatively, you could head northeast from Tengboche through glorious rhododendron forests to Pangboche, where famous relics of a yeti hand and skull were stored until 1991, when they were stolen and allegedly passed to a wealthy anonymous collector. In fact, parts of the relic were stolen some years earlier, when Peter Byrne, a member of the 1957 Slick Expedition to Everest, swapped bones from the yeti hand for human bones, and smuggled the original bones back to England for analysis in a convoluted plot involving the actor Jimmy Stewart. The test results were inconclusive. Hunting the yeti in Tibet-y Tibet is the ultimate source of all yeti legends, which were transmitted across the Himalaya by wandering Buddhist monks. Ancient Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts tell of a shaggy beast that roams the high passes of the Himalaya, slaughtering livestock, walking upright like a man and making a fearsome whistling sound.

Known variously as yeti (‘man-like animal’), metoh-kangmi (‘foul-smelling snowman’) or chemo (‘big bear’), this elusive monster is almost universally accepted as a real creature by mountain communities in Tibet. The mountaineer Reinhold Messner – not the most likely person to fabricate stories of supernatural encounters – had his own face-off with a yeti while trekking alone on a Sherpa trail from Dege to Lhasa in 1986. This fleeting encounter with a shaggy creature that stood upright and made a terrifying whistling noise inspired a 12-year quest to uncover the truth about the yeti, recorded in his book My Quest for the Yeti. After more than a decade of searching, Messner concluded that the yeti was some hitherto unknown species of bear, transformed into a supernatural being in local myths and legends. Even the Nazis took an interest in the yeti, backing a scientific expedition to Tibet by the zoologist Ernst Schäfer in 1939 in the misguided hope that the yeti might prove to be the origin of the Aryan race. Encounters are still being reported.

Russian scientist Professor Arkady Tishkov recorded a yeti sighting in 1991 while on a glaciological survey mission on the slopes of Mount Shishapangma on the Nepal-Tibet border. For your own Tibetan encounter, try your luck on the Tibetan flank of Everest or the remote valleys of Kham on the border with Sichuan in China. Meeting the migoi in Bhutan Bhutan has the unusual distinction of being the only country with a national park dedicated to the preservation of the yeti, known locally as migoi or migyur (‘wild man’), and one of the two yeti hair samples used in the Sykes study was collected in this region. Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, a remote 740-square-mile sanctuary in the east of the country, is home to many endangered species, including red pandas, snow leopards and tigers, so there’s plenty to watch out for, even if the migoi fails to put in an appearance. According to an official report from park wardens, migoi were also spotted in Thrumshingla National Park in central Bhutan in 2012. India's yeti encounters Like its Himalayan neighbours, India has its share of yeti legends.

Mountaineer Peter Bryne, who colluded in the theft of bones from the Pangboche yeti hand, found yeti footprints in Sikkim in 1948. Other encounters are even older. In the first century AD, Roman traveller Pliny the Elder wrote of a man-like creature that walks on two legs in the mountains of India. Then there is B.H. Hodgeson’s encounter with a mysterious ‘mountain ape’ in Bengal in 1832, which kicked off the whole Western love affair with the yeti. Start your own quest in the mountains of Ladakh, where the second hair sample that identified the yeti as a prehistoric bear was collected by a French hunter in the 1970s. - LonelyPlanet Scientists challenge 'Abominable Snowman DNA' results - BBC News BBC News Scientists challenge 'Abominable Snowman DNA' results By Steven McKenzie BBC Scotland Highlands and Islands reporter 17 December 2014 Close share panel Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption It had been proposed that hairs said to be from the yeti matched the DNA of ancient polar bears A theory that the mythical yeti is a rare polar bear-brown bear hybrid animal has been challenged.

Last year, Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes revealed the results of DNA tests on hairs said to be from the Abominable Snowman. The tests matched the samples with the DNA of an ancient polar bear. But two other scientists have said re-analysis of the same data shows the hairs belong to the Himalayan bear, a sub-species of the brown bear. The results of the new research by Ceiridwen Edwards and Ross Barnett have been published in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Among Dr Edwards' previous work was an attempt to carry out DNA analysis of a sample taken from bones of a polar bear washed into caves in north west Scotland 18,000 years ago. Image copyright AFP Image caption A sub species of the brown bear could be behind the Himalayan myth According to legend, the yeti is a large and elusive ape-like beast. For many years experts have been seeking a scientific explanation for the Abominable Snowman.

Prof Sykes, along with other genetics experts, conducted DNA tests on hairs from two unidentified animals, one from Ladakh - in northern India on the west of the Himalayas - and the other from Bhutan, 800 miles (1,285km) further east. The results were then compared with the genomes of other animals stored on a database of all published DNA sequences. The scientists found that he had a 100% match with a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago - a time when the polar bear and closely-related brown bear were separating as different species. The species are closely related and are known to interbreed where their territories overlap. Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption The doctor will see you now: Experts have sought scientific explanations to the yeti legend The sample from Ladakh came from the mummified remains of a creature shot by a hunter around 40 years ago, while the second sample was in the form of a single hair, found in a bamboo forest by an expedition of filmmakers about 10 years ago.

The samples were subjected to the most advanced tests available. Prof Sykes said the most likely explanation for the myth was that the animal was a hybrid of polar bears and brown bears. The research was reported widely by the media last year and, in July this year, published by the Royal Society . However, following re-analysis of the same data, Dr Edwards and Dr Barnett argue that the hybrid bear does not exist in the Himalayas. They said the previous research mistakenly matched DNA to an ancient Pleistocene polar bear, instead of a modern polar bear. In their paper, Dr Edwards and Dr Barnett said their tests identified the hairs as being from a rare type of brown bear. The scientists said: "The Himalayan bear is a sub-species of the brown bear that lives in the higher reaches of the Himalayas, in remote, mountainous areas of Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan and India. "Its populations are small and isolated, and it is extremely rare in many parts of its range.

"The common name for these bears in the region is Dzu-teh, a Nepalese term meaning 'cattle bear', and they have long been associated with the myth of the yeti." Mountain monsters Image copyright AP The yeti, also known as the Abominable Snowman, is said to be a large ape-like beast that roams the Himalayas in Nepal and Tibet. Bigfoot, or Sasquatch (above), is the legendary beast of North America. Explanations to sightings include hoaxers using a gorilla suit . The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is said to haunt the UK's second highest mountain. Scientific explanations for this Scottish creature include a meteorological phenomenon known as the brocken spectre, which causes a person's shadow to be cast on low cloud. Prof Sykes and the other members of the team behind the earlier yeti hairs analysis have acknowledged that there was an error caused by an incomplete search of the DNA database used.

However, they said in a statement: "Importantly, for the thrust of the paper as a whole, the conclusion that these Himalayan 'yeti' samples were certainly not from a hitherto unknown primate is unaffected." The response added: "We stressed in the original paper that the true identity of this intriguing animal needs to be refined, preferably by sequence data from fresh tissue samples derived from a living specimen where DNA degradation is no longer a concern." Other hair samples said to belong to the yeti have been scrutinised by experts before. In 2008, scientists in the US examined hairs given to the BBC which some had claimed were from a yeti. The scientists concluded that the hairs - obtained from the north-east Indian state of Meghalaya - actually belonged to a species of Himalayan goat known as a Himalayan goral. Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Dr Edwards has previously attempted to unlock the secrets of polar bear remains found in Scotland In 2007, Dr Edwards began a process to extract DNA from what are believed to be the only polar bear remains to be found in Britain.

The skull, of which only a part survives, was discovered at the Bone Caves in Inchnadamph, in Assynt, Sutherland, in 1927. Prehistoric remains of animals - including an almost complete skeleton of a brown bear - and humans have been uncovered in the caves. Dr Edwards hoped to shed light on what the polar bear was doing in Assynt 18,000 years ago. Dr Edwards was also involved in a DNA study of ancient brown bear bones that suggested the maternal ancestors of modern polar bears were from Ireland . Previously, it was believed that today's polar bears were most closely related to brown bears living on islands off the coast of Alaska. Image copyright Nikki Mahadevan Image caption Prehistoric remains of humans and animals have been uncovered at the Bone Caves at Inchnadamph Proof of Bigfoot? Scientists in Siberia Say Yeti Exists | TIME.com Follow @TIMENewsfeed Scientists and yeti enthusiasts believe there may finally be solid evidence that the apelike creature roams the vast Siberian tundra, reports the Guardian .

A team of a dozen-plus experts from as far afield as Canada and Sweden have proclaimed themselves 95% certain of the mythical animal’s existence after a daylong conference in the town of Tashtagol in the Kemerovo region, some 2,000 miles east of Moscow. In recent years, locals there have reported sightings of the yeti, also known as the abominable snowman. (LIST: Top 10 Famous Mysterious Monsters ) The Kemerovo government announced on Oct. 10 that a two-day expedition the previous weekend to the region’s Azassky cave and Karatag peak “collected irrefutable evidence” of yetis’ existence on the wintry plateau. “Conference participants came to the conclusion that the artifacts found give 95% evidence of the habitation of the ‘snow man’ on Kemerovo region territory,” read a statement. “In one of the detected tracks, Russian scientist Anatoly Fokin noted several hairs that might belong to the yeti,” it added. The group also discovered footprints, a presumed bed and various other markers. The scientific community has historically disputed the existence of the yeti given scant conclusive evidence.

But numerous sightings of such creatures have been reported in Himalayan countries and in North America, where it is known as Sasquatch, or bigfoot. Joe Jackson is a contributor at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @joejackson . You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME . Subscribe Popular Among Subscribers

Question: What is the name of the mythical beast that roams the Himalayan Alps?
Answer: Yeti