NEPAL/FILE: Television channel thinks it has found evidence of Yeti
- 00:00:24
- ITN Source
NEPAL/FILE: Television channel thinks it has found evidence of Yeti
An American TV host who travelled to the Himalayas to film a show on the mysterious yeti today said he took castings from three footprints that could prove the legendary giant ape exists and is living on Mount Everest. A U.S.-based television channel investigating the existence of the legendary Yeti in Nepal has found footprints similar to those said to be that of the abominable snowman, the company said on Friday. A team of nine producers from Destination Truth, armed with infrared cameras, spent a week in the icy Khumbu region where Mount Everest is located and found the footprints on the bank of Manju river at a height of 2,850 metres (9,350 feet). One of the three footprints discovered on Wednesday is about one foot long, or is of similar size and appearance as shown in sketches of the mystical ape-like creature believed to live in snowy caves, the TV company said. "I don't believe it to be (that of) a bear. It is something of a mystery for us," said Gates, 30, host of the weekly travel adventure television series, told Reuters in Kathmandu after returning from the mountain. . Tales by sherpa porters and guides about the wild and hairy creatures lurking in the Himalayas have seized the imagination of foreign mountain climbers going to Mount Everest since the 1920s. Several teams have searched for it and some have even claimed to have discovered footprints. But no one has actually seen the creature nor has it been scientifically established that the Yeti exists. Gates, an archaeologist by training, said the footprints on lumps of sandy soil, which would be sent to experts in the United States for analysis, were "relatively fresh left some 24 hours before we found them". Gates, flanked by his team members, said the findings would prompt more investigation into the Yeti. Destination Truth chronicles some of the world's notorious crypto-zoological creatures and unexplained phenomena. Some local sherpas believe that the Himalayas are abodes of strange creatures and consider the Yeti as a protector while others say it is a destroyer. Ang Tshering Sherpa, chief of Nepal Mountaineering Association in Kathmandu, who hails from the Khumbhu region were Mount Everest is located, thinks there is a kind of mysterious creature living in the Himalayas.
ITN Source | December 3, 2007
