Yeti Sheti: There is something appealing about the idea of an undiscovered creature lurking out of sight | The Indian Express

Yeti Sheti: There is something appealing about the idea of an undiscovered creature lurking out of sight | The Indian Express

Written by Stephen Alter |Updated: May 2, 2019 10:31:27 am

Alter is the author of 16 books of fiction and non-fiction. He lives and writes in Mussoorie.

Yeti Sheti: There is something appealing about the idea of an undiscovered creature lurking out of sight

The truth is, nobody can prove that the Yeti doesn’t exist simply because it hasn’t been found. Many of us believe in a lot of things for which there is no empirical evidence.

Footprints, claimed by the Indian Army in its Twitter account to be of the “mythical beast Yeti”, which were sighted by their expedition team near the Makalu Base Camp, Nepal, Tuesday, April 9, 2019. (Twitter/PTI Photo)

A few days ago, an Indian Army mountaineering expedition to Makalu, the 8,485-metre peak in Western Nepal, tweeted sensational news that they had discovered footprints of a Yeti in the snow near Base Camp. With all due respect, I would never question the integrity or motives of India’s armed forces, but the announcement, which infected social media like a viral fever as contagious as dengue, has caused a lot of amusement and some derision. Of course, this is not the first time that mountaineers have reported evidence of an abominable snowman in the high Himalaya and it will certainly not be the last. One of the relatively unknown aspects of alpine adventure is that climbers spend a great deal of time sitting around, acclimatising, waiting for the weather to clear and fighting boredom before setting off up a mountain. Base Camps have always provided a fertile environment for active imaginations, heightened anxieties and colourful storytelling.