KATHMANDU: A team of Japanese adventurers hope to prove the existence of the
mysterious yeti in Nepal's mountains, focusing on an area they are convinced is
home to the legendary
creature.
Tales of a huge
half-man-half-ape roaming the high Himalayas are as old as the hills, and local
Sherpa stories about the hairy giant have gripped the imaginations of Western
adventurers and mountaineers for
decades.
Takahashi Yoshiteru,
65, and six other Japanese team members are trekking to Dhaulagiri IV, a
7,661-metre (25,135-foot) peak where they say they have seen traces of the beast
on past trips in 1994 and
2003.
"They are going to the
same area where I saw the silhouette of a yeti in 2003," expedition spokeswoman
Nobuko Koyama said. They set off from Kathmandu on
Thursday.
The expedition
members will spend six weeks on the peak and will set up six infra-red camera
traps on the mountain 220 kilometres (137 miles) northwest of
Kathmandu.
The exploration team
is known as the Yeti Project Japan and is being sponsored by Japanese beverage
maker Suntory and a leading Japanese daily newspaper,
Asahi
Shimbum.
The cameras will be
automatically triggered if any large animals pass, the spokeswoman
said.
"Takahashi is not
interested in capturing a yeti, he just wants to get a clear picture of it, and
maybe shake its hand," said
Koyama.