Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter (16 page)

“I want one of these,” I announce. “Where can I buy one?”

“Now?” the woman asks. “It’s one a.m.”

“Yeah. How much?”

“Five dollars,” she says. “But not now. Store closed.”

“We’ll give you twenty dollars per set,” I tell her, “but we need them now. We won’t be here tomorrow.”

She takes off like a shot. I don’t know who she wakes up or what store she breaks into, but within ten minutes she’s back with an armload of boxes. We each happily overpay and spend the wee hours of the morning laughing and shooting dice under a neon moon.

After we finish filming the season, I fly home to my parents’ house in Boston. It’s Christmas Eve. As I’m unpacking my bag in my old room, I take out the aged box and place it on my bed. My father looks over and exclaims, “Shut the Box!”

“What?”

“Shut the Box,” he says.

“You mean ‘Whore-Dice’?”

“What?”

“It’s called Whore-Dice,” I say matter-of-factly.

“It’s called Shut the Box, son. What do whores have to do with this?”

At the precise moment as I was innocently cavorting with sex workers in Bangkok, my parents were visiting our relatives in New Mexico. While there, one of my cousins introduced my father to a game, which, though it had been dressed up a little for resale, was exactly the same as the one I encountered in Thailand. It was labeled Shut the Box. Turns out it’s also called Batten Down the Hatches, Tric-Trac, and High Rollers. Also, Whore-Dice, apparently. References to the game exist as far back as the twelfth century, and it spread to the far corners of the world by sailors, among whom it was intensely popular. It makes sense that it eventually came to Bangkok, since sailors and prostitutes go together like . . . sailors and prostitutes.

So there we sat, that Christmas Eve. Mom warmed up some of her famous New England clam chowder, Dad sank down in his big Dad chair, and the three of us sat laughing by the crackling fire, playing Shut the Box while a light snow began to fall.

Thank you, Thai prostitutes. You made my Christmas.

13: Yeti

The Himalayas, Nepal, 2007

Kathmandu is a city that doesn’t want to be found, obscured within the vast, undulating valleys that fringe the bottom of the tallest and least accessible peaks on earth: the Himalayas. It’s all but impossible not to press one’s face against the airplane windows during the final approach, which incites awe in even the most jaded of frequent flyers. The capital appears, glinting in the morning sunlight on an improbable mountain plateau, unfolding in a patchwork of winding streets and dilapidated temples. It’s a high-altitude mash-up of religions, architecture, and ethnicities nestled more than a mile above sea level. This city has also been the unlikely birthplace of lavish kingdoms and soaring artistic achievements. This is a traveler’s city, the kind of exotic destination that raises your pulse without even trying. And even though I don’t have a clue what Bob Seger is on about in that song of his, one thing’s for sure: he
really
wants to get to Kathmandu.

We’ve come here to launch an expedition with the goal of finding evidence of the yeti, one of the heavy hitters in the Cryptozoological Hall of Fame. Truth be told, the yeti is actually my all-time favorite monster. Sightings of this elusive primate date back to time immemorial, and despite little physical evidence to support his existence, the sheer volume and historic legacy of eyewitness reports are endlessly compelling. Modern reports started circulating in 1921, when British Army explorers returned from a reconnaissance mission to Everest. They brought back tales of a mysterious creature well known to the Himalayan people. Soon after, a newspaper coined the moniker “Abominable Snowman,” and the West’s fascination with the yeti was born. Even Sir Edmund Hillary claimed to see mysterious footprints on his record-setting Everest bid in 1953.

Over the years, the creature blossomed into a cryptid celebrity, pursued by dozens of explorers chasing after him like paparazzi. Though it is head-scratching that a monster thought to rip people limb from limb would be marketed to children, the A-list beast was famously featured in Hergé’s
Tintin in Tibet
. Also, in what has to be one of the most surreal television sequences ever conceived, the yeti’s teeth are unceremoniously ripped out of his mouth by an elf with a pair of pliers in the animated classic
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
. Perfect for the wee ones. Today, his fortunes seem to have waned, forcing him to appear in the Syfy Channel movie
Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon
and to cameo alongside Brendan Fraser in the blisteringly awful
Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
(a movie also notable for not actually featuring a single mummy).

There are an array of theories about what exactly eyewitnesses are seeing in the Himalayas, with many experts writing off the yeti as a misidentified brown bear or nothing more than the bastard offspring of folklore and superstition. The fact of the matter, though, is that people in disconnected villages scattered throughout the Himalayas have issued strikingly consistent descriptions of the same creature for thousands of years. From Tibet to Nepal to Bhutan, the details vary only slightly, and the through line is the same: the Snowman is real.

Before arriving, the team and I pore over as many of these accounts as we can, many emanating from remote mountain towns. One thing’s for sure: looking for a yeti in the Himalayas is certainly going to be an enormous pain in the ass. This is one of the most extreme environments on earth, and moving an expedition through these mountains takes Herculean effort.

We check into the famed Hotel Yak & Yeti, an institution in Kathmandu. Considering its reputation, the rooms are surprisingly plain, and the entire establishment could use a little freshening up. However, the staff are hospitable and the location unbeatable. Once we settle in, I hit the streets, where I happily find myself lost in the endless maze of Thamel. I stroll past stores crammed with knockoff North Face gear (North Fake, as it’s known locally), pashmina scarves, and glittering gemstones. Narrow lanes deposit me into expansive courtyards framed around pyramidal temples and the high red walls of the former royal palace. I slowly gawk through the squares, and it isn’t long before a young boy latches onto me, asking for money. I tell him that I’m staying at the Yak & Yeti, and if he can find me five good dice by sunset, I’ll give him something for his trouble. He sprints away, calling back to me in broken English that he won’t let me down. I wander with abandon, photographing as I go. The sun slips below the palace walls, casting an evening shade onto the cobblestone streets. The sights and smells of Kathmandu are powerful narcotics, dizzying my thoughts and drawing me along.

Eventually, I’m so turned around that I have to hail a rickshaw to take me back to the hotel. A tattered photo of the driver’s family is taped to the inside of the bonnet. I suddenly remember that it’s Thanksgiving, and I smile at the annual memory of my mother shooing me out of the kitchen while I steal a few bites of her delicious cooking.

The rickshaw comes to a stop, and I step down to see the young boy skulking in the alley near the Yak & Yeti, probably fearing the consequences of venturing onto hotel property. He’s managed to scrape together a miserable assortment of plastic dice of varying colors and sizes. Though they aren’t at all what I wanted, he’s clearly done his best. I give him a big thumbs-up and fork over a few hundred rupees, to his delight.

I regroup with the team, and we head to a local rooftop restaurant that is serving, beyond all odds, turkey and all the fixings. The enterprising owner caters to the American ex-pat community in the city and had the birds flown in all the way from Australia. The dinner may not be quite like Mom makes it, but nobody’s complaining. The food and the company are satisfying and warm, and there’s much to be thankful for. I momentarily tune out the merry conversation and gaze out at the silhouette of an ornate pagoda rising up in the twilight. It’s a privilege to be here, eating in the company of this graceful old city. I soak in as much of the night as I can, mindful that tomorrow will arrive too soon, with much work to be done.

Before we leave Kathmandu, we interview a variety of primatologists and local experts who help to narrow our search by zeroing in on a “Goldilocks” zone. At too low an altitude, the locals who populate the mountain slopes would surely spot the animal regularly. At too high an altitude, a large primate would struggle to find sustenance and shelter. In order for the yeti to both stay off the radar and find sustenance, the habitat has to be, like the fairy tale says, juuuust right. The experts suggest an altitude between 9,000 and 15,000 feet. We cross-reference that band of elevation with eyewitness reports and soon found ourselves plotting a course into the Annapurna region. Annapurna is Sanskrit for “full of food,” which, though it sounds promising, belies the fact that it contains some of the most barren and hostile mountains on earth.

In order to penetrate the Himalayas, we have to catch a flight to the high mountain town of Lukla. From there, we plan to trek toward Everest base camp, stopping at various eyewitness locations along the way. We also hope to examine a legendary yeti scalp in the Buddhist monastery in Khumjung. This is one of a number of isolated monasteries that claim to house venerated yeti remains in shrines. The most famous is perhaps the Pangboche monastery, which once displayed a severed yeti hand. But in 1959 a member of a yeti expedition stole a section of the hand and had it sent illegally back to the United States under the watchful eye of the most unlikely smuggler in history: Jimmy Stewart. The remains made it to America, where they were deemed inconclusive. The rest of the hand was stolen in the 1990s and is probably now sitting in the private collection of some real-life Dr. No.

We arrive at the tiny domestic air terminal just before dawn. An army of trekkers and Sherpas are jammed up against every counter, trying to get themselves and all manner of climbing gear onto various flights. There isn’t an airline here that I’ve heard of, and I gaze up quizzically at signs for Cosmic Air and Buddha Air, names that are decidedly at odds with the frustrated, swearing passengers below.

Our airline, the appropriately named Yeti Air, manages a small fleet of decaying Twin Otter aircraft that entered service more than thirty years ago and have been on active duty every day since then. We eventually shove our way through security (I get through with a pocketknife and lighter, if that’s any indication of the crack team working here) and slip out onto the tarmac, only to find that a layer of fog has rolled in and delayed our departure. We stroll the runway, taking in the eerie sunrise and thick vapor enveloping the tattered planes parked along the airstrip. After a while, I hear a propeller jump to life far behind me and turn back to see the flight crew waving us into the cabin.

The flight takes only about thirty-five minutes, but it’s memorable. Along with seats for about fifteen people, our plane is crammed with equipment, fuel canisters, lumber, and just about anything else the pilot can jam into the cabin. The aircraft door rattles, exposed wiring hangs down above me, and the sound of the obsolescent engines is deafening. The lone flight attendant has wedged herself on top of a wooden crate, her head bent to one side and pressed against the ceiling. The extent of the in-flight service is a bowl of hard candies, which she has us pass amongst ourselves.

The indescribable view of the planet’s most magnificent peaks helps distract me from the nearly omnipresent signs that the plane is on the verge of disassembling mid-flight. The mountains rise up quickly on all sides, and the rooftops of Kathmandu quickly recede, giving way to lonely villages and simple farms. The plane creaks and buffets in the strong, cold wind, and visibility turns to nothing (which is just what you want when slaloming through the highest mountain passes in the world). Finally, we drop down through the clouds and bank hard toward a cramped little town poised on the edge of a cliff.

The Lukla airstrip is an absolute horror to behold. Short, narrow, and tilted at an improbable fifteen-degree angle, it begins at a precipice and ends with a high stone wall a scant 1,500 feet away. The pilot makes a flurry of last-minute adjustments to the controls and slams the plane down onto the runway, rapidly braking before we reach the dead end. It’s a rush, and everyone on board (including the squished flight attendant) seems thrilled to be in one piece. Six months from now this same plane will miss the runway altogether, killing all eighteen people on board.

Lukla is like a strange refugee camp, with barbed wire surrounding the airstrip. A crush of Sherpas unloads cargo and food, hauling it up and away from the airport. The morning air is freezing, since the sun hasn’t yet breached the towering range; I can see my breath as I step down from the plane. We shuffle past a few army officers, walk through the fences, and enter what passes for a town. The cobblestone streets are slick with water, yaks commingle with the local vendors, and there seems to be animal feces almost everywhere. Nearly every building is littered with signs advertising lodging and food, while tiny shops hawk backpacks, climbing gear, and last-minute supplies for teams departing for Everest base camp. It feels kinetic here as we make our way through the fray and toward the trail.

The hike from Lukla to the next village, Phakding, is short—only a few hours, and most of it is at a surprisingly even grade. The scenery cannot be justly described but appears to be hijacked from an alpinist’s dream. I’d be amazed if there’s a prettier hike in the world. Snowcapped peaks sail above picture-perfect rows of pine trees. The trail hugs both sides of an emerald green river, and we cross over countless narrow footbridges that span the torrent below. Every few hundred meters we’re delighted to encounter a faded rainbow of fluttering Buddhist prayer flags and script-carved rocks. It’s like trekking through a Tolkien novel, and if a bearded wizard passed us on the trail, I wouldn’t bat an eye. By early afternoon the sun is shining high in the sky, and we cross a small suspension bridge into Phakding, which is little more than a cluster of houses strewn along the bank of the river. We set down our heavy packs and warm up with lemon tea and biscuits before settling in for a late-afternoon schedule of not doing a damned thing. At this altitude, we’re more than happy for a chance to rest. The sunset, while beautiful, is accompanied by a terrible chill in the air, and we soon retreat to our rough-looking accommodations.