Setting the timer on my Canon EOS, letting it sit haphazardly on the frozen earth at ground level, no tripod, no camera man, no pro zoom focus, but just letting the camera’s artificial intelligence do its job, the above pic was that adventurous moment when I was only a few hours in time, and a few meters in altitude away from the highest pass in the world.
Btw, that little white dot, a smudge right above my head, is the moon. At that height and in the right condition, you can see the sun and the moon at the same time.
Yeah, I do some pretty badass things. :)
Stories about the Yeti – the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot etc are something I am familiar with since childhood. I also knew that the Himalayas is the home of the Yeti before I went there. But I never really dwelled on that thought much. Until… this little sticker on a signboard caught my attention.
I hiked through numerous Himalayan villages and dangerous mountainsides, through thick vegetation and greenery. I even walked between narrow canyons where sunshine only hits at noon for a few minutes. Can the Yeti be living in one of these hamlets? After all, some people in the mountains worship this mythical creature.
I looked down the deepest gorges on planet Earth and even went hiking at different times of the day, to see if the Yeti is out there. I even filled my pocket with a bunch of lollipops; maybe that would lure the Abominable Snowman.
I traversed isolated parts of the Himalayas, places that can be comparable to an alien planet. I mean, if the Yeti wanted privacy and sought no interaction with humans, these kinds of terrains and landscapes would be preferable. I don’t know if it was the altitude, my creative mind, lack of oxygen or the remoteness, but at times I could see faces shaping up in these mountainsides, some eerily looking like a Yeti’s face.
So high in these regions of the Himalayas, the clouds looked like they could be reached with my arms if I jumped. Oh ya, I even walked into one – perfect camouflage for the Yeti to hide? I could even swear that I lost track of time on this side of the mountain. Like a few hours just zipped past and I don’t remember much but only footing and hiking. Did I travel into a time vortex? Is the Yeti hiding in it?
Look at this moon-like terrain. Not a blade of grass. No humans can survive here for an extended period without basic needs. If the Yeti is somewhere here, it would already know that a lone person (me) is hiking through this barren land.
Then, like every great adventure, it must eventually come to an end. So that I could come back to civilization and maybe write a blog about it, or produce a song about it?
These pics were taken towards the end of my journey while descending. Yet, notice how I am still above the cloud level. A view of the altitude that people mostly see from an aeroplane.
So the question people might ask is – Did I find the Yeti?
Let me put it this way – Rather than finding the Yeti, I might have understood the ‘concept’ of the Yeti. If that is diametrically close to the idea of finding it, then maybe.
And yes btw, with a 15kg backpack and just a map in hand, I did this all alone.
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