Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

I was off: first to New Delhi and then on to Kathmandu, where I’d catch another little plane high up into the Himalayas and then trek up into thin air looking for the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman. The Himalayas are so vast that I’d been slightly at a loss as to where to go for this particular quest. There’s a monastery in Khumjung, within sight of Everest, that claims to have the actual skull of a Yeti. It would be a hard slog to get there and I eventually figured that this should be my destination; I would learn what else I could along the way.

My favourite Tintin book has always been Tintin in Tibet. Quite why it’s called Tintin in Tibet has never been clear, though, as Tintin clearly landed in Kathmandu. I presume Tintin in Nepal just didn’t sound as good. Maybe Hergé couldn’t resist the alliteration? Whatever, Tintin had headed off to Nepal to try to find his Chinese friend Chang, who had been in a plane crash. The Yeti made a guest appearance in the book. I was rather hoping that he might make a similar appearance in mine.

Along with the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, the Yeti is probably the most famous monster in the world. Pre-Buddhism a lot of Himalayan peoples reportedly worshipped a ‘wild man’, an apelike figure said to carry a stone for hunting. From the moment Westerners began to attempt to climb the peaks of the Himalayas, starting in the early twentieth century, reports came both of sightings of a bipedal, apelike figure and discoveries of footprints. Probably the most famous of these were the photographs Eric Shipton took of huge footprints. Shipton was a respected mountaineer who was attempting to climb Everest. He took them at an altitude of about 19,500 feet and the footprints looked human except for the size and the fact that they were made by someone or something wearing no shoes. I came across these photos as a kid and was blown away by them. I think it was the fact that so many reports and sightings came from well-known mountaineers like Edmund Hillary (he saw footprints in 1953) who were not in the business of self-promotion. A lot of them were serious, scientific types and this gave the sightings great credibility. Of all the monsters I’d been after so far, to me, the Yeti was the most credible given the extraordinary remoteness and inaccessibility of the Himalayas and the constant drip-drip of sightings from visitors to the region.

The flight to India was uneventful except that Virgin seemed to have kindly upped my minor-celebrity status as at least three people came up to my seat, shook my hand, and hoped everything was fine on board. Then, when we landed in New Delhi, a lady was assigned to meet me at the plane and take me through immigration to get my luggage. There was no queue jumping and no special doors; just the normal procedure but with someone in uniform standing next to me all the time. It just made me feel like a rather simple child being shown how an airport worked.

Flights to and from Kathmandu are notoriously late so I hadn’t booked any connecting flights on the same day. I’d therefore decided to spend the night in the Indian capital, which was no real hardship.

I awoke the following morning at four and packed before heading downstairs to the lobby. As I got out of the lift a man standing in the middle of the lobby wearing a trendy leather jacket said, ‘Mr Joly?’

I nodded at him and settled my bill before following him outside. I got into a tiny old Ambassador, the signature car of ‘old’ India. I slumped down in the back seat as another man drove us out of my hotel, amusingly named the Claridges. An armed guard at the gates bowed as we exited on to the relatively empty streets of pre-dawn Delhi. The airport was only twenty minutes away and we drove in silence for about ten minutes before the man in the leather jacket turned to talk to me from the passenger seat.

‘OK, we shall see later but it is up to you.’ Leather-Jacket Man wobbled his head about in that peculiar Indian fashion.

The car drove on and I started to think about Nepal. It was late February and, technically, still too early to trek: things normally don’t get going until March as the weather is too cold before then. I was going to climb to about 13,000 feet (that’s two and a half bloody miles straight up into the sky, if you’re reading this on a beach). I worried about whether I was fit enough to do this.

‘Uumm, no . . . I’ve been twice before: Delhi, Mumbai, Goa, Hampi and Agra.’

‘The Taj is truly magnificent but normally people do not revisit; there is so much to see in India.’

‘Is there any specific part you would like to visit that maybe you were unable to do so on your last visit?’

‘I am saying that if you would like, we can organize a different itinerary than possibly the one you did on your last visit to the Taj . . .’

‘I’m going to the airport . . . To get a flight to Kathmandu . . . You know that, right?’

‘Oh blimey . . .’ said Leather-Jacket Man. ‘You are the incorrect fellow.’

By this time we’d been in the car about thirty minutes and were well on our way out of Delhi towards Agra to start Mr Crawley’s tour of the Taj Mahal. Leather-Jacket Man was very kind. He ordered the driver to take me to the airport while he telephoned the Claridges to tell a no-doubt concerned Mr Crawley that he was on his way.

I was flying on an airline called JET to Kathmandu, which was a short hour-and-forty-minute flight. The flight was two and a half hours late, though – which, according to the guy sitting next to me, wasn’t too bad. Apparently you need 8,000-feet visibility to land in Kathmandu, as there’s no facility for an instrument landing. Visibility was currently 160 feet. This was a predictable problem when you wanted to land in one of the world’s highest capitals. I was disappointed to learn, however, that Kathmandu, at an altitude of some 4,400 feet above sea level, only just slips into the top-ten list. What’s the world’s highest capital city, then? The answer is quite complicated. It should be Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, at 11,975 feet, but since the country has been annexed by China Lhasa is now technically not a capital. The honour, therefore, should really go to La Paz, in Bolivia, at 11,811 feet. Unfortunately, although La Paz is the default capital of Bolivia, with most of the government institutions there, the official capital is actually Sucre. So the world’s current highest capital is Quito, in Ecuador, at 9,350 feet. There’s one for the pub quiz.

The first thing to hit me as I got off the plane in Kathmandu was the sweet smell of incense and a sense of restrained chaos. While filling out my form for a visa I managed to leave my iPhone on the desk. I discovered this only in the luggage hall. In most countries that would be it: there would be no way you’d be allowed back into the immigration department. Nepal, however, is a relaxed place and I wandered back through the airport without anybody even questioning me. I gratefully retrieved my phone and exited the terminal building. To my delight the weather was glorious: very sunny with clear blue skies. There was no sign of the mysterious thick cloud that had delayed our arrival.

I hopped into a car that had been sent to meet me and headed towards my hotel, the appropriately named Yak and Yeti.

The hotel was very plush and filled with Buddhist monks all bustling around a sumptuous buffet in the ground-floor restaurant. I chucked my bags into my room and went out to have a look round the city. I needed to get some hiking equipment for my trip and I’d been told I could rent it. I wanted a warm down jacket, a walking stick, a decent hat and a couple of maps. I turned on to the Old Kings Way and walked down to the Royal Palace before turning left and heading into Thamel, a bustling area of little streets containing hundreds of shops groaning with trekking stuff, hippy gear and Nepalese/Tibetan art shops. The streets were packed with tuk-tuks, motorbikes and little cars all hooting and barging their way past pedestrians. I loved it. Every hundred yards or so, however, men walked past very close and whispered, ‘Grass?’ or, ‘Wanna smoke something?’ or, ‘Marijuana sir?’ This was definitely not my bag so I walked straight on, trying to look as though I knew my way around. This is always the secret in these types of places. If you look hesitant for even a second then you’ll be swooped upon. Fortunately there were far greener horns than myself wandering about and I was mainly left alone. There was one ratty-looking little guy who spotted me and made a beeline towards me. I tried to swerve and move but he was fast and right next to me in seconds.

I was confused: wasn’t tiger balm some muscle relaxant easily available at any major pharmacy? Why was this guy ‘dealing’ tiger balm when it wasn’t even illegal?

‘No, thank you. I’m OK for tiger balm right now.’ I tried to dismiss my new friend with a lofty wave.

‘My friend, this is best tiger balm in Kathmandu – premium gold standard, sir . . .’

I really didn’t know what to say and just kept walking until he finally gave up and picked on someone else. I walked on wondering whether I’d possibly misheard him. Maybe he’d been selling tiger bum? Maybe this was a new dastardly area of Chinese medicine now that they’d finished with tiger penis and dolphin nose? Were they experimenting elsewhere? Sadly I shall never know.

I rented a thick down jacket, a water flask and a walking pole for my Himalayan monster-hunt then walked back to the Yak and Yeti. There I had to meet Robin – an Englishman who had been in the Gurkhas and had then driven out to Nepal in 1978, literally moments before Afghanistan and Iran made that particular trip inaccessible. Robin had lived in Nepal ever since, and was helping me with my expedition. He’d arranged a Sherpa guide for me. His name was Mingmar and he’d come along with Robin to meet me. The plan was to fly into Lukla, one of the world’s most spectacular airstrips, perched on the edge of a cliff. From there we were going to trek up the Khumbu Valley towards Everest and the town of Namche Bazaar (two days’ walk). From Namche it was half a day’s walk to the monastery at Khumjung where I hoped the monks would show me the scalp of a yeti. Mingmar had been born in Khunde, a village right next to Khumjung, and knew everybody up there. He had a very wide smile and seemed to be happy that we were trekking at this time as there would be very few people about.

Robin warned me about altitude sickness. It is a problem above 6,500 feet and could affect anybody, especially those who don’t acclimatize and climb too quickly. You could be an incredibly fit marathon runner and it still could affect you whereas ‘someone like you’ – Robin looked at me slightly disparagingly – ‘might totally get away with it; you just don’t know.’ He recommended that I take a pill called Diamox twice a day. Although not actually designed to help with altitude sickness (it’s for glaucoma and epilepsy) this thins your blood and climbers have been using it for ages. Robin said it would help but warned me once again that you never knew how altitude was going to affect you. If he was trying to freak me out then it was working.

I said my goodbyes to Robin and, as he walked away, wondered whether I should have mentioned my intense loathing of walking uphill. It was too late, however: he’d disappeared into the Kathmandu night.

I certainly wasn’t going to find a Yeti sitting around the hotel. They did have a rather pathetic footprint in a rock in the garden, which a sign claimed ‘had been found when the hotel was being built . . .’ Yeah, whatever . . .

I sat down in the lobby to read a bit of the only book I could find on the Himalayas: the one written by Michael Palin to accompany his TV series. The book was, like Palin, very charming and enthusiastic. I’d met Palin once at a show we were both doing in memory of Peter Cook. He was utterly charming, like a rather lovely uncle whom you could be fairly certain wouldn’t abuse you.

I was pleased to see that he’d also stayed in the Yak and Yeti. I started to read about his director being kidnapped by Maoist rebels while they were trekking but couldn’t really concentrate as there was a pianist playing ‘Baa-Baa Black Sheep’ in the centre of the lobby. He then moved on to murdering a ropey version of ‘Let It Be’. Why are there always pianists in bloody bars? Nobody wants them there. It’s like music in lifts. Who decided that lift music could be either pleasant or necessary? Were ‘they’ scared that, left alone with our thoughts between the first and third floors, we might find it all too much and blow our heads off with concealed handguns?

Maybe lift music accounted for the biggest news story to hit Nepal since Everest was conquered? (George Mallory, the English climber who disappeared on Everest in the 1920s, hated the term ‘conquered’.) In 2001 the crown prince shot dead the king and queen and seven other members of the Nepalese royal family before killing himself. Perhaps he had been in a lift with no music? More likely he’d had to sit in the lobby bar of the Yak and Yeti listening to this God-awful pianist. Whoever was to blame for that tumultuous event, it had led to the deposing of the monarchy and the establishment of a democratic system that was currently still finding its feet. The poor Maoists who kidnapped Michael Palin’s director had lost their mass appeal as they found themselves to be just another potentially corrupt political party. Being a guerrilla was so much more fun.

I got to a section in Palin’s book in which he describes asking his Sherpa about the Yeti. The man told him that Yetis liked to drink so locals attempted to catch them by leaving out dead dogs full of alcohol. Unbelievable: Bigfoot loves menstruating women and the Yeti is an alcoholic.

The pianist was now playing ‘Delilah’. It was definitely time for supper and bed. My adventure started the following day and I wanted to be in good spirits. I had an early start and reading about Palin’s altitude sickness was making me nervous again.

I joined the seemingly endless hordes of Buddhist monks pigging out at the hotel buffet. It appeared that, like their Benedictine counterparts, Buddhist monks don’t do the ascetic thing. They like the good life. I opted for à la carte as I can’t trust myself with buffets. Humans, in my experience, when faced with unlimited food, will just keep eating until they can’t walk. It’s the inner hunter-gatherer instinct within us all. This is a basic truth as relevant to Buddhist monks as much as to porky comedians from the Cotswolds.

I slept well and left the hotel at five in the morning, having left my main suitcase with the concierge for the duration of my trek. I had managed to get what I needed into a smallish rucksack. A very tiny man, flirting with the frontiers of dwarfdom, picked me up and drove me through the deserted streets of Kathmandu. Occasionally the headlights would pick out groups of Nepalese police deployed in strategic corners and covered in protective riot gear. My tiny driver was perched on two big cushions that just about enabled him to peer over the dash at the pockmarked road ahead.

The domestic terminal was a place full of exotic-sounding airlines like Buddha Air and Yeti Airlines. Yeti Airlines were sadly in the process of changing their name to the less interesting Tara Air, which was a shame. I was pretty sure that this had something to do with the terrible crash they’d had at Lukla’s Tenzing-Hillary Airport, the very airstrip we were now headed for. It happened on 8 October 2008: there was very heavy fog but, for some reason, the pilot still tried to land on the tiny (1,500 feet long and 65 feet wide) runway. He missed and smashed into the cliffs below, killing all eighteen passengers. The pilot was the only survivor. I was flying on Tara Air and hoped that they’d done more than just change their name. As my Sherpa guide, Mingmar, joined the scrum for tickets I realized that I was feeling rather out of control. I worried about how I would fare with the altitude – Robin had said that 99 per cent of people suffered from it and around 20 per cent were totally incapacitated. I opened my bag and necked my first Diamox. I felt a bit wimpy. Even at our maximum height, at Khumjung Monastery, we would be at roughly 13,800 feet -only half the height of Everest. I have a neighbour in my village back home with the unlikely name of Kenton Cool. He has apparently climbed Everest loads of times. I should have popped in to see him before I went, except I would have probably felt even more of a wimp.

The plane was a Twin Otter – a name that I presumed represented the total power of the two tiny engines. There were twenty of us crammed into the thing: five trekkers (obviously one of them being a Kiwi: international law forbids any interesting journey taking place without a Kiwi) and the rest red-cheeked locals. The plane took off very steeply and, as we flew higher, we bounced around as though we were in a fairground ride. The cockpit door was wide open and I could see no sky through the windscreen, just monstrous snowy peaks that seemed to loom above us even though we were miles up in the air. I thought of Chang, Tintin’s friend whose plane crashed high in these mountains. Despite Hergé having never travelled, his depiction of Kathmandu was remarkably accurate. I hoped that this would not extend to this plane trip.

We landed on the sloping runway at Tenzing-Hillary It was eight in the morning and cold. We were at 9,350 feet and I almost immediately felt a little dizzy and disorientated. I wasn’t sure if it was altitude, hypochondria or nerves. It was not unlike the feeling I’d had when I wandered into the I’m a Celebrity . . . camp. Then, as now, I’d found myself in a desperate private battle to retain control. There was another bunfight for the luggage as the departing passengers were bundled on to our plane and it rocketed off down the runway to be flung into the abyss by the ramp at the end. They didn’t muck around up here. The total turnaround time from landing to take-off was about seven minutes. I presumed they didn’t want to risk a build-up of ice on the wings.

We walked out of the one-room airport and climbed a path that ran above the runway and then down into the village of Lukla itself. Mingmar signalled that I should follow him into a guesthouse, where he was warmly welcomed. I had some cheesy scrambled eggs and hot coffee and read a rather alarming leaflet on ‘Acute Mountain Sickness’. I was still definitely feeling a little light-headed but I hoped that it wouldn’t get worse as the symptoms listed were ‘extreme nausea, vomiting, unconsciousness and death’.

Cheery stuff. We had a four-hour walk ahead of us to where we would be spending our first night in a village called Monjo.

The secret to trekking at this altitude, said Mingmar, was to go very slowly. This was absolutely fine by me and I assured him that he would get no speed out of me whatsoever. The beginning was rather nice as it was downhill to the valley floor below us. The only problem was that I was acutely aware that everything I descended I had to climb back up again.

The first half-hour was pretty easy-going and I just took in the scenery. Locals had to carve steps out of the steep landscape to enable them to grow anything. These descended like a curious set of giant stairs to the raging river far below.

The sun came out and it got rather hot so I immediately started shedding the layers and layers of protective clothing I had donned that morning in Kathmandu. I asked Mingmar if Yetis were ever seen this low. He replied that there were occasional sightings but that most occurred above 13,000 feet. He told me about a girl from Khumjung who had been attacked by a Yeti and survived. She had said that it smelt really bad. It had ripped out a huge clump of her long hair and thrown her into a nearby river. She had played dead and the Yeti left her alone and killed three of her yaks as she watched out of her half-closed eyes. Mingmar said that she would probably talk to me but that she would want money. I supposed that it was a way to earn a living telling tales of being attacked by the missing link. One of the unifying themes in the creatures that I’d gone after was that they smelt bad. Was being hygienically challenged a must for any self-respecting monster? It crossed my mind that the smell might not actually come from the monster but actually emanate from the witness, their body switching into automatic fear-response pong mode.

Mingmar told me that there were two different types of Yeti: a yak attacker and a man attacker. I asked him which type this one had been as it seemed to have done both. He said that it was a yak attacker – otherwise she would not have survived.

We walked on and on down the path, slowly descending towards the azure-blue river roaring beneath us. Every so often we’d come to a stupa that tradition dictated we had to pass on the left. Most had prayer wheels that you spun as you passed: ‘for clean soul’, said one sign. There were also enormous rocks decorated with multifarious symbols; most were money rocks and were supposed to bring good luck.

Keeping a steady pace behind us was another trekking couple – a crusty-looking Australian and his German companion, who seemed to be constantly weeping. We stopped for a breather and they did the same, with the German girl ripping off her Converse shoes and attempting to puncture several nasty-looking blisters. They were headed for Everest base camp, a full seven days’ trek away. I was highly doubtful that they were going to make it.

In one village we passed a group of four British-Asian trekkers. They did a double take as I went past and then, when I was a hundred yards away, one of them bellowed at the top of his voice, ‘Hello! No, I’m in Kathmandu and it’s rubbish . . . !’

Technically this was stupid as we were nowhere near Kathmandu, but that’s British geography skills for you. I ignored them and walked on as they all creased up in peals of laughter. Mingmar was very confused and I tried to explain that it was from a TV show I’d done but I don’t think it got us anywhere.

Going downhill was OK except you really had to watch your footing. It was the occasional uphill parts that really took it out of me, and this was the easy day. I’d been getting fairly fit in the previous months, having bought a running machine, but the foot I broke in Argentina was still giving me big problems. The thin air left me breathless and my foot was starting to ache; this was not a good sign but I cracked on and we reached Phadking in two hours, which was fairly good going. We stopped for lunch and I decided not to have a beer but went for a Coke (sugar energy) and the rather wonderful option of yak and chips. It was pretty good – a little stringy if I was being picky, but tasty.

We sat around for an hour chatting. I asked Mingmar what he thought my chances were of seeing a Yeti. He smiled and said that everything was possible. I was already starting to smell like one and hoped that this might attract one to me. We set off again and soon crossed a long and rather wobbly suspension bridge to the other side of the ‘Seven Rivers Join’ river (it possibly lost a bit in translation). I noticed that every Sherpa who passed by had a long red line on the top of their cheeks as though wearing rouge. I worked out that, because they had such angular faces, the strong Himalayan sun hit their cheekbones hard. This wasn’t going to be a problem for me.

We started walking along the left bank of the river and I really began to understand the sadistic logic of the topography. If the path went down for a bit, it inevitably started going up soon after. After four hours of walking my legs were starting to feel like dead weights and my broken left foot was screaming in agony. I had to stop and indicated so to Mingmar, who pointed to some flat stones overlooking the river. We sat and I quizzed Mingmar more about the Yeti.

I asked him whether he had ever seen one. He laughed and said no. I asked him why he was laughing. Did he not believe in the Yeti?

‘No, no, Eti he exist – just I no see him.’ He said he’d heard the Yeti howling and made an echo-ey, throaty sound that reverberated across the valley to demonstrate. ‘When we hear this we burn juniper branches – Eti no like.’

I’d seen villagers burning pine all along our path through the valley but this juniper Yeti-preventer tip was good.

This was excellent stuff. I enquired further. They’d had three yaks in the family and one went missing. He and his father went into the mountains to look for it and they found it dead.

‘No, it was before mobile phone with camera. Now everyone have camera. My cousin he take photo with mobile phone of Yeti footprint in snow at 13,000 feet.’ He drew a huge footprint in the sand.

He said, ‘No: this very big.’ This was promising. He said I could talk to his cousin in Khumjung. I was stupidly excited.

We moved on and every step was torture now. I kept having to take more and more frequent breaks. Mingmar was really sweet and pretended that he was exhausted, but he was a rubbish actor. Finally, after five and a half hours’ walking, he pointed to a village high up on the hill above us.

I could hardly breathe, both with the excitement of the news and because I was near death. We came round a bend and the path snaked steeply down back to the river where a little bridge crossed it. On the other side I could see the path wind suicidally up an enormous hill towards Monjo. It was the final push but I had hit the wall and it took me a good twenty minutes and several breaks before we got up the hill and finally walked into town. Mingmar pushed open a little gate to a sweet guesthouse. We’d made it.

I felt unbelievably relieved. The crusty Aussie and his weeping girlfriend (who was no longer weeping) were already there as they hadn’t stopped for lunch and had pushed on through in a supreme effort that made me reassess their abilities to reach Everest base camp in Converse trainers.

We greeted each other like warriors back from a battle and agreed to meet for a beer a little later. I found my room, a sweet little prison cell with MDF walls and a rickety bed. I flopped down and immediately started to worry about the next day. The path up to Namche Bazaar was straight up the mountain for a good three hours. I reckoned I’d make it in about eight if I didn’t start getting ill from altitude sickness. My left foot had swollen up and I could barely get my boot off. This was not looking good. I had to get up to a serious altitude to find this Yeti scalp. I wasn’t going to have another disappointment like the one in the Congo. I limped over to the main building and ordered a beer. It was a real Ice Cold in Alex moment as I downed the cool, lovely liquid in one go. The Aussie came in and, despite sounding like a New South Wales sheep farmer, turned out to be British and had only been working in Australia for two years. This was a man clearly desperate to change countries, as there was zero sign of his English upbringing. They were travelling on a shoestring and I felt very spoilt. His German girlfriend, Carina, soon joined us. She seemed in much better spirits and appeared to have forgotten her earlier unhappiness. I had some Eccles cake (my secret drug of choice for the trek – I’d got it from an outdoors shop in Cirencester. It’s basically pure sugar and gives you a real kick) and I gave them one for the trip. I also gave them a couple of Diamox as I had way more than I needed. They clearly had very little money and they reminded me of what Stacey would have been like when she trekked here in the early nineties. They’d already been for a wander round the village and said that I shouldn’t bother. There was nothing to do or see.

‘Just a place renting a horse to anyone who doesn’t want to walk. Can you bloody imagine?’ The Aussie/Brit looked disgusted.

He asked me something else but I wasn’t listening any more. A horse? That was the answer. I’d rent a horse. I wasn’t here to bloody trek; I was a monster-hunter and I needed to get to where I was going as fast as possible. Also I knew that the less exertion you went through the less chance you had of getting altitude sickness. Also my foot was really hurting and . . . I knew I was just making excuses but all I wanted to do was to go and rent the bloody horse. I was too embarrassed to broach the subject with the Aussie/Brit and German so we had supper together in the communal room. A wood stove was giving out great heat and a couple of cute little cats wandered about stealing our food.

I had a second culinary first in the same day: water-buffalo curry. It was good, but the yak and chips just edged it. After supper I slipped out of the room and wandered down to where they’d said the horse lived. I found the lady owner and we did a bit of bartering. I managed to get a horse to take me up to Namche Bazaar for forty pounds. It was the best money I would ever spend. I returned to my (by now freezing) room and got into the first of my two sleeping bags and fell asleep almost immediately.

Mingmar woke me up early the next morning and we had a breakfast of eggs and black coffee. I broached the subject of the horse slowly with him. I told him that, as he knew, I was a leading scientist here to do some serious investigative work and I couldn’t have my injured foot prevent me from reaching my goal. I told him that I’d come across the lady with the horse and had rented it for the day. He seemed totally astounded by this but nodded politely and said this was fine, although I could almost see the words ‘You total wuss’ appear on his forehead. Once breakfast and my embarrassing admission was over, we packed up and I prepared to meet my horse.

The horse was walked through the village to the guesthouse, as though for an execution, by the lady owner. Her name was Tiza (the horse, not the lady) and she had one look at this large foreigner and took an instant dislike to me. Undaunted, I hopped on and grabbed the reins. I’m a pretty good horse rider. I did quite a bit as a kid in Beirut and I’ve ridden all over the Atlas Mountains so I was certainly going to show Tiza who was boss. I urged her on but she refused to move. I gave her a couple of prods with the stirrups but she ignored me and wouldn’t budge. I did the weird ‘click click’ sound that horse riders around the world have variations of. Nothing, Tiza was going nowhere.

The horse’s owner meanwhile, a thin scary lady, was sizing me up and already regretting her decision to rent me the horse. There are temples in China on top of steep hills where lazy pilgrims can be carried up the innumerable stairs in hammocks suspended on a bamboo pole between two porters. The only catch is that the porters charge per weight of the pilgrim. While very sensible on the porters’ behalf, this is rather humiliating for the larger pilgrim when being put on the scale and having their fee shouted out for all to hear.

Scary Lady had had enough of my equestrian demonstration. She grabbed the reins off me and set off ahead leading a still, reluctant Tiza.

Great, I was going to be led all the way up the Himalayas like a fat child at pony club. I’d envisioned more of a macho riding role for myself. This really made me look seriously Kenton Uncool.

Off we trod through the street of Monjo. Trekkers were preparing for the day ahead, sorting out their poles, stuffing their backpacks. All to a man just stopped what they were doing and stared at me as we trudged past. I could hear snickering from some and words in many languages that didn’t sound complimentary. I looked straight ahead as though thinking about some great mission ahead of me but it was no use. It was a little like being paraded through the streets with the word ‘paedophile’ slung around your neck. The sense of general disdain was palpable. Thankfully we were soon out of the village and going along the path.

We came to a gate where there was an army checkpoint that wanted to see our papers. As the soldier took my passport he said something to Mingmar, looked at me and laughed. Mingmar laughed as well. As the soldier started to carefully peruse my passport I got off the horse and wandered towards a sign I’d spotted on the gate. It was in English and welcomed visitors to this ‘special area’. It then went on to urge visitors to:

1. Refrain from taking life

2. Refrain from anger

3. Refrain from jealousy

4. Refrain from offending others

5. Refrain from taking excessive intoxicants

Bugger: this place was going to be no fun if I couldn’t take lives and offend people. I decided to rely on a sensible amount of intoxicants.

On we plodded until we came to another wobbly metal suspension bridge that crossed the raging torrent below. UK horses would have been literally shitting themselves looking down through the thin metal lattice. Tiza, however, was made of sterner stuff and crossed over without a hint of concern. Once over the bridge the path climbed steeply up the mountain through thick pine forests. Mingmar told me that this was a new path: just three weeks ago massive winds had knocked down hundreds of trees in the valley and left the old riverside path impassable. I was amazed at how quickly it had been built. Since this was the only way up the valley and eventually to Everest, the livelihood of the whole valley depended upon it -and this was a powerful incentive. We climbed and climbed and I could feel Tiza breathing very heavily so I made us all stop and take a breather. I offered Tiza some Eccles cake but she wasn’t interested. I was convinced that she was plotting about how best to chuck me off the vertiginous slopes to our left.

We rounded a corner and came across the Aussie/Brit and the German. They had left far earlier than us and were therefore unaware of my equine conversion. We passed them as they struggled up the steep hill. I waved an embarrassed hello. They were sweet enough to wave back but you could see that they thought I was a total arse.

We came to another bridge. This one was built by Edmund Hillary, who had clearly done a lot for the people of this valley. Mingmar had been educated at the Hillary School in Khumjung, which was how he learnt to speak such good English.

At the bridge I got off, as the exit from it was a ludicrously steep drop straight down which then immediately started to climb back up again. This was the beginning of the arduous three-hour climb up to Namche. The first bit had just been a warm-up.

When I say arduous, I know that I was on a horse and that any keen trekker reading this is poo-pooing it as a Sunday stroll. Well, my Sunday stroll is up the hill to the pub – a distance of about 300 yards with an altitude differential of about 13 feet. This was a three-hour steep climb going up more than 2,000 feet while already nearly two miles in the sky. We were already approaching the height of some of the highest peaks in Europe. Rant over.

I got back on to Tiza. I was totally out of puff from my five minutes on foot. This was pathetic but it also made it clear that if I wanted to see this Yeti scalp I was not going to do it without Tiza.

Up and up we (Tiza) climbed. The path took a sharp zigzag pattern with very little let-up. Tiza was clearly finding it quite tough as she had started farting profusely. Every time she did so Scary Lady looked back at me with an accusing glare. I smiled back, assuming she would recognize her own horse’s farts. By the third such instance, however, it was obvious she was convinced it was me.

‘Not me: horse . . .’ I said, pointing at Tiza’s arse. Scary Lady just shook her head in disgust and trudged on.

We passed a descending pair of German trekkers. They looked at Tiza and then they too looked at me in disgust. I tried to indicate that I had a broken foot but they continued on down, confident in their moral superiority. After an hour and a half’s steady climb we reached a tiny plateau where a lone Sherpa woman sat with a bowl of tangerines for sale. I dismounted and bought one. Considering the effort she had made to get them there, it was the least I could do.

‘You want to see Everest?’ enquired Mingmar, as though he was showing me an interesting bird.

I walked past the tangerine lady and there, through a gap in the pine trees, was the tallest mountain on earth, the roof of the world. We were unbelievably lucky: it was another clear day and the peak was clearly visible, with a thick plume of cloud being blown off the summit towards Lhotze, the fourth-highest mountain in the world. I was dumbstruck. Everest is so much part of schoolboy folklore and here I was standing next to my flatulent horse looking right at it with my own eyes. I just stood and stared for about five minutes. Suddenly there was a new arrival on our little plateau. It was an Australian who had been on the same flight as me up from Kathmandu. He was crazily fit and had been full of talk about all this being quite easy compared to ‘two weeks in the Bush’. He’d set off from Lukla at the same time as me with a Turkish guy he’d met. They’d gone at breakneck speed and told us they were aiming to get to Namche Bazaar in the same day. Mingmar looked very doubtful and warned them about altitude sickness and how long the trek was. They hadn’t listened and set off confidently. The Aussie had even strapped a heart monitor on to his chest and he had a watch that constantly beeped at him to relay various medical information.

Now, halfway through the next day and here he was: alone and clearly not in Namche Bazaar. He looked extremely surprised to see me ahead of him. I didn’t tell him about the horse for a while and asked him where the Turk was. He told me that he’d got terrible altitude sickness just out of Monjo, the village where we’d spent the night. He’d felt dizzy and was vomiting and they’d been forced to return to Monjo and overnight there. The Aussie had left the sick Turk and headed on alone that morning. I showed him Everest and he completely freaked out. He started filming himself and narrating at the same time. I left him to his video diary and clambered on to my horse. As I said goodbye, the Aussie looked up from his camera and noticed the horse. His face told me that our brief bonding period was over.

We climbed for another hour until finally we rounded a corner and I got my first glimpse of the curious village of Namche Bazaar. Set in a half-bowl on the mountainside, its multi-coloured buildings cling to the steep slopes in symmetrical rows. I rode into town praying that no Westerners would see me. A German couple did, but they looked the types to have several prisoners incarcerated in their basement back home. We locked each other in mutual stares of contempt. They changed tack and tried to give me a condescending look but I’d figured that the attitude to take now was that you only walked if you couldn’t afford a horse. I was a king riding into town saluting his poor pedestrian subjects.

I was eager to try this new approach on others but it was Saturday and everybody was at the bazaar, of Namche Bazaar fame. People come here from as far as Tibet to barter and trade their goods. I got off Tiza gingerly and walked down the main street giving the distinct impression that I had a cucumber stuck up my arse. I found a place that would give me cash off my credit card and I paid Tiza’s owner. It was money I would never regret spending.

We checked into the Yak Hotel and I had lunch, some momos (Tibetan dumplings) and a bottle of sugary Orange Fanta. As I sat alone in the wooden dining room, I spotted a photo on the wall of the Dalai Lama. He was being led through some snowy mountain pass while seated on a yak. Not only that, but he was carrying an umbrella to keep the sun off him. This all made me feel a little better about my horse problem. If it was good enough for the Dalai Lama then it was certainly good enough for me.

I still felt absolutely fine, although I was very aware of the thin air and how it makes you behave a little like an old man. I shuffled around Namche to have a look at the place. It was the biggest village in the Khumbu but there was still not much to do. As in everywhere on earth and no doubt, when we eventually get there, on Mars, there was an Irish bar. I have no idea how the concept of global Irish bars started. Was there somewhere in the world an enormously rich Irishman who kicked all this off? Who was behind this worldwide conspiracy?

The other staple of world travel is, of course, the Kiwi. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an Irish bar run by a Kiwi on the summit of Everest. I hadn’t been in Namche for more than two hours when I spotted my first one. He was wearing his All Black rugby shirt (it is illegal, as a New Zealand citizen, to wear anything else abroad) and wandering vacantly down a little alley. He spotted me.

‘Excuse me, mate – do you happen to know a spot selling toilet paper? I’m bloody desperate and the guesthouse doesn’t provide any. I think – pardon my French – if I don’t find some soon I’m going to drop the kids off right here in the street.’

I pointed to a little shop down some stairs that I had just climbed up. It seemed to sell everything. He thanked me and ran towards the place in a cautiously desperate manner. I continued on toward the far end of town, where very little was going on. The day of the bazaar, always a Saturday, is also a holiday in town so lots of places were shut. I started back towards the Yak Hotel. Every step was a bit of an effort and I felt a little like an asthmatic pensioner. I shuffled into the street of the Yak Hotel and bumped into the Aussie/Brit and the German. They were both looking remarkably chipper. It had taken them only four hours to do the trek. I had clearly completely underestimated their stamina. There was no mention made of my horse; it was the elephant in the room.

I suddenly felt very tired. Just the walk around town had wiped me out. This is one of the symptoms of altitude sickness and the reason that I needed to acclimatize there. I spent the afternoon in bed, sleeping and reading. At six Mingmar knocked on my door and came in. He asked me if I was OK. I said yes but he didn’t believe me and told me that it was important to tell him if I wasn’t. I insisted that I was fine, just sleepy, and we went down to the wooden dining room, very like a European-style ski chalet. Two climbers were watching Touching the Void. Although a brilliant film, it really isn’t the one I’d watch before going climbing. In five days’ time the Everest climbing season (March and April) would start and there would be several expeditions going through Namche.

I still felt fine but incredibly lethargic – everything was a bit of an effort and I went upstairs and got into my sleeping bags and read some more Michael Palin. He was now in Tibet and his soundman had been hospitalized with acute altitude sickness. I felt very lucky and drifted off to sleep but I had terrible dreams. A Yeti smashed my window and dragged me outside. He put me over his shoulder like a rag doll and bounded up the mountainside. I didn’t seem overly concerned about the Yeti’s intentions but I kept shouting at him: ‘I must acclimatize! I simply must acclimatize.’

The Yeti didn’t seem interested and we eventually ended up in a cave covered in blue ice, where he threw me down in a corner and started to watch Downton Abbey on a television. When Downton finished the Yeti was weeping loudly and he came over to my corner and started shaking me . . .

‘You OK?’ he asked. I nodded, blinking in the bright morning sunshine. ‘You were screaming.’

I really was feeling OK and a lot less lethargic than the day before. I had another full day acclimatizing in Namche ahead of me before we set off for Khumjung. Mingmar wanted to take me to the top of the mountain behind Namche to visit the Sherpa Museum. We walked up a set of steep steps that seemed to go on forever. Every step in this thin air was torture. Eventually we got to the top and I was rewarded with an epic view of Everest. Once again the sky was swimming-pool blue and a thick plume of wind roared off the peak like a mini-tornado. Mingmar told me that I was very lucky to get this sort of weather in February.

We visited the Sherpa Museum, a lovely place commemorating all things Sherpa and especially their climbing achievements. Mingmar introduced me to Lhakpa Sonam, his cousin. He ran the museum and was a veritable fount of knowledge. He was, however, very deaf – something very common among the Sherpa people and put down to iodine deficiency. He asked me to write down any questions I had about the Yeti.

I started asking him any questions I could think of. He told me that the name Yeti was a Sherpa word, ‘ye te’, meaning ‘mountain monkey’. He was convinced of its existence as so many people had stories of encounters. The Yeti, he said, was supposed to have huge breasts – so if you came across one you should run downhill, as these breasts tended to knock it off balance. If you ran uphill the Yeti would sling the breasts over its shoulder and could climb very fast. It was supposed to have brown hair and be very similar to a large monkey. Sightings by locals all claimed it was bigger than a gorilla and he said that it existed on both meat and berries. He also repeated what Mingmar had told me about there being two types of Yeti: one that attacked yaks and another that attacked humans.

The vast majority of footprints and sightings were found between 16,500 and 19,500 feet. He said that when Hillary found footprints he became fascinated in the whole story. I asked him about the Khumjung scalp. He said Hillary had negotiated its loan from the monastery and it was taken to London to be examined. There it was ascertained that it was definitely not a bear. They said it had to be a very large creature but they did not know what it was.

I walked back down into Namche Bazaar and spent the rest of the day sitting in the sun outside my hotel, watching people go by. I saw the Aussie/Brit and the German again and we agreed to meet later for a drink.

Come five p.m. we headed for the Irish bar, but it was closed. Instead we went to a nearby bar from which ear-splitting house music was coming. Inside, the walls were festooned with T-shirts signed by visitors from around the world. Nearly all were friendly and funny – except the British ones that were invariably of the depressing ‘Lads on tour’/ ‘Smash it up!’/ ‘Foreign bastards!’ variety.

There were two locals playing snooker and a hectic international field-hockey match on the blurry TV. We sat at the bar and I must plead guilty to taking excessive intoxicants. The German told me that they’d climbed up the steps to try to take photos of Everest but when they’d got to the viewpoint they hadn’t been too sure which peak it was. This was hardly surprising as it turned out they’d based their identification on a comparison with the mountain on the Toblerone packaging -they were convinced that was Everest.

We said our goodbyes and I wished them well. They were heading off towards Everest tomorrow and I was off to Khumjung. I’d spotted another horse for rent and hadn’t been able to resist. I didn’t tell my new friends.

I headed back to the Yak. That night was the coldest yet and I slept with my hat on with only my nose peeking out from beneath my two sleeping bags and three blankets.

I was awoken to the sound of very loud Buddhist chanting from one room next door and the heavy smell of dope from the other. Some trekker was clearly having a rest day. I felt on top form, particularly knowing that I had a horse on hold. My new steed was a lot better-looking than Tiza and went by the unusual name of Hermann. Apparently Hermann used to be owned by a German baker who plied his trade in Namche to hungry trekkers. Whatever, I was very pleased to mount Hermann as the route out of Namche was a veritable Kamikaze climb. I had given up all embarrassment about riding a horse: anything that got me to where I wanted to go without killing me was fine by me. A helicopter back to Kathmandu was the ideal scenario the moment my investigations were over. Sadly, this was not an option unless I fell off a mountain. It looked like I was going to have retrace my steps all the way back to Lukla.

Hermann and I set off uphill and, after fifteen minutes, passed a group of three Germans who looked to be very near death. They were at a stage way beyond contempt and I could now see a vicious, desperate sort of jealousy in their vacant eyes. They looked capable of ripping me off Hermann and claiming him as theirs. I kept his adopted nationality quiet and remembered the Dalai Lama. I passed by them quickly with a regal wave.

We climbed and climbed and Hermann made amazing progress. After an hour and twenty minutes we reached a plateau where Hillary had built the highest airstrip in the Himalayas: Syangboche.

This is a dust track ending in an aircraft-carrier type ramp from which to fling the planes into the void. He’d had it built to help evacuate stricken climbers. What I hadn’t known was that, just three months after its completion, his wife and daughter died in a plane crash.

Hermann, Mingmar and I plodded over the deserted runway and entered a forest of short, stubby juniper trees. The ground was now an endless lawn of coarse grass and it reminded me very much of plateaus in the High Metn in Lebanon where I used to picnic as a child. On we plodded until we came to a corner with yet another magnificent view of Everest. We continued through patches of rhododendron, pine and juniper; it was by far the most incredible scenery of the trip so far. Here I was, riding a majestic German/Nepalese steed through the unexplored Himalayas. They would surely write books about my bravery in years to come. Only the very boldest made it here . . .

Suddenly up ahead there appeared an elegant, low-slung modern building. I asked Mingmar what it was.

‘Everest View Hotel . . . Many Japanese, they come for one night to see Everest . . .’ He looked slightly appalled by the concept.

‘They fly little plane from Lukla to Syangboche and then taken to hotel for one night. Is for very lazy tourist.’

‘But you can’t just fly into this altitude and not get bad altitude sickness?’ I asked.

‘Well, I suppose, since it’s here, we might as well go in for a cup of tea,’ I said.

I got off Hermann and looked around vainly for valet parking. I tied him to a rhododendron bush and we marched up the imposing steps into reception. It was all minimalist swank inside and we were soon ushered on to the Everest-View Terrace for the pièce de résistance. The view was un-bloody-believable, possibly the best I’ve ever seen from a hotel, and once again I found myself staring slack-jawed at Everest.

We sat down and had a cup of tea. We were not alone on the terrace. To our left was a group of about twenty Japanese residents. The waiter told us that they had arrived only an hour ago. Looking at them, most seemed to be quite near death – but they were still bravely trying to rustle up enough energy to strike some gangsta camera poses. It was clear, though, that their hearts weren’t in it. As we watched, one man dropped his camera and ran to the edge of the balcony and vomited profusely over the railings. A couple of the group started taking photos of the vomiting man while several started to suffer from the inevitable gag reflex. It was time to move on.

We walked down from the hotel through a small rhododendron forest until we reached the bottom of the valley and entered the village of Khumjung. I was really chuffed. Hermann dawdled through the dusty streets. He’d clearly had enough and knew that the end was in sight. We came into the main square in which sat a guesthouse run by Mingmar’s brother. On the other side of the square was a stupa and the Hillary School where Mingmar had been a student.

We had lunch, the ubiquitous vegetable curry and rice. While we ate Mingmar told me that the woman who was attacked by a Yeti and thrown into a river would talk to me . . . For 6,000 dollars.

I nearly spat out my curry. I politely declined and suggested that I could possibly go to thirty dollars. Mingmar apologized but said that some Japanese TV crew had paid her this sort of money for an interview and she now refused to talk to anyone who wouldn’t stump up the same sum. Bloody Japanese, they were really ruining this area . . .

I told him that for 6,000 dollars I wanted an exclusive interview with the Yeti himself. Mingmar laughed but he was obviously a bit embarrassed about the whole affair. He said that she had gone a bit doolally since the attack anyway. The Japanese crew had brought a Yeti costume with them, as they wanted to film a reconstruction of the attack. It turned out that they hadn’t bothered to mention this to the woman in question. When the fake Yeti appeared she went totally mental.

Realizing that this interview was never going to happen I asked Mingmar if we could go to the monastery. He nodded, pleased to get off the loony-Yeti-attack-woman subject.

We left the guesthouse and Hermann, who was tied up outside, visibly flinched. I patted him on the head and assured him that his work was over before walking through a maze of waist-high stone walls towards the monastery, which I could see at the top of the village. We passed by locals sitting in the warm sun doing their washing or chopping wood. There was a house whose roof was ripped off in the terrible winds two weeks ago. About ten people were hard at work repairing it and it looked like a sort of Sherpa barn-raising ceremony.

After five minutes or so we arrived at the monastery, the Khumjung Gomba. A large money stone was positioned right outside the entrance. This was rather appropriate as it turned out that nobody could see the Yeti skull without paying a ‘donation’ to the monastery. This Yeti business was . . . A business. A warty Buddhist monk stood outside the main door and greeted us with a beatific smile as we entered a courtyard filled on three sides with wooden benches and surrounded by cloisters. Mingmar whispered that once a year the whole valley came here for a five-day festival.

Then an elderly looking man, not in monk clothes, made his way slowly down to greet us. He pointed to a hidden door covered by a golden drape. He lifted the drape and unlocked two stiff padlocks. He opened the door and it creaked open in a rather satisfyingly Scooby Doo manner. We stepped inside behind him. It was a shrine and a rather beautiful one at that. Large multi-coloured Buddhas lined the rear wall and formed the backdrop to the central shrine. Hundreds of sticks of incense burnt everywhere in the room, creating a pungent, mystical fog. On both sides of the room were hundreds of little cubicles in the wall with the edges of prayer cloths hanging down from them. Just to my right an enormous gong hung from the ceiling. Both Mingmar and the old man set about bowing and lighting candles while my eyes darted around the room looking for the elusive Yeti skull. They eventually alighted on a locked lime-green metal cabinet that seemed at odds with everything else in the room. I waited until Mingmar had finished his ritual and then pointed at the cabinet.

‘Please make a donation.’ He pointed to a slot in the side of the cabinet that I hadn’t spotted before. I pushed a tightly folded 500-rupee note through the slot and the Keeper of the Skull (this appeared to be his title) unlocked the cabinet and dramatically swung open the doors. Inside was a glass box with the words ‘Yeti Skull’ daubed in white paint on the wooden frame. The box had a white silk shawl draped over it. I bent down and lifted the shawl off the box. Inside was a cone-shaped object, about twelve inches high. It looked like someone had lopped the top off the head of a cone-headed animal. The hair was a reddish-brown colour and, on first impression, it looked pretty convincing.

I asked Mingmar to ask the Keeper whether he could bring the box out of the cabinet. The Keeper said no, we couldn’t touch it; it was forbidden. Mingmar spoke to him for a while and then told me that the Keeper had kindly agreed to get the box out of the cabinet and put it on the top for a mere 200 dollars. I was starting to get a bit hacked off with the financial nature of anything Yeti. It was an expensive business, this monster business. I told the Keeper of the Skull that for 200 dollars I wanted the case unlocked and for me to be able to put the skull on my head while levitating. Mingmar communicated this to the Keeper, who didn’t seem very amused. We eventually agreed that if I gave 200 rupees to the Keeper personally, as opposed to making a donation, Mingmar would be allowed rotate the skull in the cabinet so that I could photograph and film all sides of it. The Keeper told me that this was a special honour and that I was not to tell anyone, so . . . You didn’t hear it from me.

It was a bit annoying because I was pretty sure that I remembered footage in the original Arthur C. Clarke TV show in which a much younger Keeper of the Skull danced around the courtyard with it on his head.

I handed over the money and Mingmar gently rotated the box a full 360 degrees as I snapped away. One side of the skull had a vertical split all the way down it. Mingmar showed me a piece of paper on which was written, in dodgy English, the history of the skull.

Before the Khumjung monastery was established the peoples of the valley celebrated the festival of Dumji in the village of Thane. A dispute arose over who should organize the festival and the people of Namche, Khunde and Khumjung went it alone with Khumjung chosen to be the new host. As the new hosts it was expected of the people of Thane to give a worthy present in tribute. They gave them the Yetis Skull. They were so offended by this gift that they kicked it all the way home (hence the split) the skull was kept in the monastery and it was only in the twentieth century that its significance was realized.

I asked the Keeper if he had seen a Yeti. The Keeper said he had never seen a Yeti but he had heard them many times. He said that they sounded like a crying baby and that he often heard them at night. He did the cry for my camera and I have to admit that it was a touch spooky.

He then told me a story about a local villager who was at 19,600 feet with his Yaks. It started snowing really hard and the man wanted to move down lower into the valley. On the way down he saw a figure ahead of him in the snow. He thought that it was someone from his village and he shouted and the figure stopped. As he approached it the Yaks went crazy with fear and he smelt the creature (you guessed it: it was the Yeti) and it was not a good smell. The creature disappeared into the blizzard. When the man got back to the village he was crazy with fear and got very ill.

The Keeper now looked at us expectantly, like someone telling a ghost story to a bonfire of Scouts. There was silence for a moment. I wanted to hold the skull in my hands and it wasn’t going to happen. The Keeper locked up the cabinet and ushered us out into the courtyard. We thanked him and he began the long, slow shuffle back up to his cloistered quarters.

We exited the monastery and walked back down to the square. I had a look round the Hillary School. It was very impressive. Mingmar went up to Khunde to visit his parents and I sat in the sun writing up my notes and soaking up the silence.

That evening Mingmar returned with his brother, the owner of the guesthouse. It was another freezing night and we sat around the communal stove drinking beer and talking. They told me about their other brother, who had climbed Everest. He had taken photos of a Yeti footprint in the Makalu region -again at the seemingly preferred Yeti altitude of 19,600 feet.

Then, out of the blue, the brother in front of me started telling me about a trip he’d made up the Holy Mountain the previous October. The ‘Holy Mountain’ is the name for the mountain that stands right behind the village; Western climbers are not allowed on to it.

The brother told me that they had built a big drinking-water construction project on a ridge on the other side of the Holy Mountain. One night, they were camping up at the site when the temporary water supply that they’d set up stopped working.

The brother climbed uphill to where they had set up a big water tank, only to find that it had been knocked over. Nearby were a set of huge footprints in the snow, just like the ones his brother had photographed. He said that he took two photos of the tracks on his mobile and then scarpered, as he was very afraid.

I asked him where the photographs he’d taken were. He said that they were on his computer. I asked him whether I could see them. He nodded and beckoned me through into the family bedroom. In the corner he had an old computer set up on a table. He fired it up and, when the home screen appeared, clicked on a file in the bottom right of the screen. There, on his computer screen, were two photographs of a set of large footprints. They were not the best quality, and he hadn’t put anything next to them for scale, but they were clearly large footprints and he said that they were not of any animal he knew of. I saw no reason for him to lie.

Back on my night out in Namche, I’d noticed a painted Yak skull in the bar and I had told Mingmar how much I liked it. His brother had one that he’d bought in Tibet and he and Mingmar presented it to me as a present. I was so chuffed: it was a really beautiful thing, painted in yellow with Tibetan script on it.

I thought about it all night and in the morning I had to tell them that I couldn’t take the painted skull: I’m always bringing stuff back from my travels and I worried that this might well end up being the straw that broke Stacey’s back. Also, I was unsure as to whether I could get a skull through UK customs. Hillary apparently got the Yeti skull back to England with the help of the actor Jimmy Stewart’s private jet. (Stewart happened to be holidaying in India at the time and helped Hillary out.) I had no such high falutin’ assistance (as Jimmy might have said).

That morning it was crazily cold and there was a heavy frost on the ground. The plan was to walk all the way down to Monjo without a horse. We waited until the sun snuck over the nearest peaks and then set off. I’d rather hoped that Hermann would be waiting outside for me but his owner had retrieved him like a horse thief in the night.

The first twenty minutes were awful with a steady slog up a set of very steep steps. I huffed and puffed like a big bad wolf but, once we reached the top and passed a little stupa, it was downhill all the way. And I mean downhill. We crossed back over the dirt airstrip and kept going down. We threaded our way through the dwarf-juniper forest dotted with the occasional bulbous rock. Soon – ridiculously soon, in fact – we got to a point overlooking Namche. The view was wonderful but the descent into town was perilously steep and my knees were really starting to hurt as they took all the downhill strain.

A short history of my left leg

I suppose I’d better take you through the history of my unlucky left leg as I keep grumbling about it. Back in 1987, when such things might have seemed a touch cooler and I was still sporting guyliner, I was the proud owner of a pink Honda Camino Scooter (49cc). I was on my way down the Gloucester Road to my girlfriend’s house when I overtook a bus and was hit by a Sloaney woman in a Peugeot 205. Her bumper went straight into my left knee and I went flying off the bike and into the doorway of a pub. I ruptured all the ligaments in my knee and had to have quite an operation that left me on crutches for three months. It also left me with quite a cool scar shaped like a question mark that I tell my kids was the result of a great-white shark attack.

Then, in around 1996, I was on a Greek island called Evia, visiting my lovely sister who lives there. I went with my then girlfriend, who had a PhD, allowing her to call herself ‘Dr’ Burr. (Weirdly, I have dated two PhD ‘doctors’. One, the aforementioned Dr Burr. And the other? Dr Gurr. I kid you not.)

Anyway I wanted to rent a scooter but the Greek guy at the rental place persuaded me to take a motorbike instead. I had absolutely no idea how to ride a motorbike. We were in the town of Styra and Dr Burr was on the back when we came to a stop at some traffic lights. Dr Burr, who was also unused to motorbikes, started wobbling and the whole bike fell over, crushing my left knee.

Dr Burr was uninjured but I my kneecap was smashed into four bits. I was forced to fly back to the UK where (proper) doctors wired it up and tried to fuse the thing back together. While recovering in hospital I became rather attached to a button that would give me a hit of morphine every time I squeezed it. This helped a lot when Dr Burr came to see me in said hospital and dumped me unceremoniously.

Then, in 2011, I agreed to do Celebrity Total Wipeout in Argentina. For those of you not ‘up’ with shit TV, this is an insane assault-course-type competition where you are thrown into water and bounce off huge red balls for the sadistic pleasure of the viewing public. I agreed to do it because they flew me out to Buenos Aires club class and, as I was going to Antarctica afterwards via Patagonia, it was all going to work out nicely. Sadly, in the qualifying round, I found myself in second place and took an ambitiously competitive leap into the void and landed very, very awkwardly on my left foot, snapping three metatarsals. It’s a wonder, frankly, that I can still walk. And, yes, I am both left-handed and left-footed.

Anyway, back in Namche, the descent had killed my knee so we stopped in a store that was doing a roaring trade in knee supports and painkillers. I slipped two on and two in and I felt much better. We continued on down towards the river. Ten minutes out of Namche we walked past some panting trekkers.

‘Don’t worry, only twenty minutes to go,’ I said to them and they smiled and I smiled back. We were all trekkers together in one big happy trekking world and nobody needed to know anything about my horse problem.

Then the painkillers kicked in and I felt a bit woozy and evil. We spotted another pair of trekkers struggling up the hill, about thirty minutes away from Namche.

‘Keep going – three more hours and you’re in Namche,’ I smiled as they both physically crumbled before my eyes and sat down disheartened on the side of the trail. I walked on feeling no guilt and blaming my behaviour on the drugs and altitude.

As we carried on down Mingmar told me a story about when he’d gone to work in Japan for a year. He was doing construction work with ten other Sherpas and he now spoke fluent Japanese. When they’d first arrived, however, they didn’t speak a word of the language. One of their gang went off to buy some food and came back with various tins of things and they cooked up a very good dinner. The following night they invited some other workers from a nearby camp to share a meal. When these Japanese workers arrived for dinner they saw the tins and were horrified.

Tears rolled down Mingmar’s face as he told me the story and the sound of our laughter echoed off the steep valley walls.

After two and a half hours we reached the bottom and crossed the suspension bridge over the river. As we crossed we passed two trekkers walking along happily, seemingly without a care in the world. Little did they know of the fiendish ascent right ahead of them. It was like driving along on the empty side of the motorway having just passed a five-mile traffic jam on the other side and seeing people driving towards it unaware of what was to come. It made you feel good . . . Or maybe that’s just me?

We walked along the riverbank until we stopped for lunch. We had vegetable curry, rice and some powerful chillies. The chillies certainly woke me up, and afterwards we made good time and were soon in Monjo. This was where we’d stayed on the first night and I was under the impression that we were stopping there. Mingmar, sadly, had other plans and so we marched on. He wanted us to sleep in Phadking, the village where we had stopped for yak and chips on the first day. It was another two hours’ walk and my knee groaned in agony. I slipped on my headphones and listened to music. I started doing a much better pace, no doubt also helped by us having descended more than 3,000 feet. I marched to Bon Iver, Lana Del Rey, the Stranglers, Marianne Faithfull and the Divine Comedy. My legs were like lead and my knees ached with every step but I was managing not to stop for too many breaks. Eventually we crossed the final bridge and it was but a short five-minute walk up to the Green Village Guesthouse. As if on cue, on came ‘Glad It’s All Over’ by Captain Sensible.

Walking through the main drag of the village there were several hectic games of Phadking underway. This is a game not unlike billiards but played with checkers on a flat piece of wood. The player must slide his or her checker across the wooden top and try to knock his or her opponent’s checker into a small round hole cut into the corner of the wood. The table is sprinkled with flour to make it slippery. As the game was named after the village, I presumed it originated there – but apparently different versions of it are played all over the world. Either way it was certainly popular.

We climbed the stairs into the Green Village and I threw my bags on the bed and collapsed. I was filthy. A thick film of dust and dirt covered me but I couldn’t have cared less. I was lying down and only three hours from Lukla and the flight back to Kathmandu. I remembered the steep walk down on the first day and I already knew that I had taken my last steps in the Khumbu Valley: I needed more horse.

Later that evening, as we sat around the wood stove in the centre of the Green Valley dining room, I broached the subject with Mingmar. He seemed unsurprised by my request and rang someone on his mobile to organize it. The stove was gloriously hot and I could feel the heat seeping into my tired bones. Outside the skies had darkened and the clouds had rolled down the valley, lowering the temperature by ten degrees in a second.

I was sick of beer so I bought a bottle of XXX Rum for us to drink. It did the trick and Mingmar was soon three sheets to the wind and suggesting we move on to the local drink, rakshi. This is made from millet and I’d had enough local spirits to know that it was going to be rough. I was wrong. It was utterly delicious, subtle, and really hit the spot. We sat around the Sherpa Aga and talked bollocks for hours.

My horse arrived early the following morning and, to my surprise, it was Tiza, my second day horse. The look of horror in the poor animal’s eyes as she spotted me was unmistakable. She backed away, trying to turn round and bolt for home, but Scary Lady now saw me as a total cash cow and grabbed the reins for dear life.

The climb up to Lukla wasn’t nearly as bad as I remembered and on the frequent flat bits I felt very embarrassed when passing fresh-faced backpackers heading off on their treks and staring at the lazy bastard on a horse. The last half-hour, however, was reassuringly steep and I was very pleased to have Tiza. I think I can confidently say that she didn’t feel the same way. It started to snow quite heavily. We looked back up towards the Holy Mountain above Khumjung and it was white. We’d got out just in time. Mingmar thought otherwise.

Damn it, he was right – but I wasn’t going back. I’d had enough and wanted a warm bath and my legs back. We trudged on up the path until we came to the final slope, where a memorial to the victims of the Yeti Air crash reminds trekkers that these are dangerous mountains. We passed by and crossed under the arch demarking the end of the trail. As we entered the town I quickly hopped off Tiza and walked in before anyone could see me. I paid Scary Lady off and patted Tiza on the nose. Tiza turned her head very slowly to look at me.

Our eyes met and we shared a brief moment and then she said, clear as day, ‘Don’t ever come back here again, you fat bastard.’

I jumped back in surprise and looked around to see if anybody else had heard her. Nobody appeared to have done so. I have had many such occasions, when I have been convinced that animals have spoken to me. It’s either a very special skill or the first signs of severe mental illness. My son, Jackson, claims that every cat he encounters winks at him. It appears to be a family trait.

We said goodbye to Tiza and Scary Lady and trudged through the snow into town to my last guesthouse. I had to get a plane to Kathmandu the following morning and it wasn’t looking promising. Given the height and the variable weather conditions, flights had sometimes been cancelled for up to a week. With the snow still falling hard, I had a sneaking suspicion that I might be getting to know Lukla rather well.

I spent the rest of the day writing up my notes and drinking cup after cup of sweet black tea. It was bollock-numbingly cold and, for the first time, I got out my rented down jacket and put it on in the communal room of the guesthouse. As with all Nepalese guesthouses, there was a wood burning stove in the middle of the room – but it wasn’t lit. Various members of the guesthouse family came in, turned on a telly and watched an Indian show called Dance India Dance.

This was a succession of terrible dance acts, one being a woman dancing round her ironing board while another was a man in drag dancing inside a closet . . . Subtle it was not.

The judges all spoke in Hindi/English saying anodyne things like, ‘Very sweet act; I wish you the best of luck.’ After the panel had spoken a rather creepy man in a leather chair (who reminded me of Cyril from That’s Life!) appeared to make the final decision. He slammed anyone male but was incredibly complimentary about any woman performer: ‘You have a most fabulous form and such a charming smile . . .’

The Nepalese family oohed and aahed at every act as I desperately hinted that it might be time to light the stove. They ignored me and so I poured green chilli all over my Sherpa stew hoping it might warm me up. I went to bed at seven p.m. and had the coldest night I have ever spent in a bed (and I have slept in two ice hotels).

I woke at five-thirty absolutely certain that all planes would be cancelled. Miraculously however, the day became clear and sunny and the runway had been magically cleared of snow. I had a coffee and walked over to the airstrip. Mingmar came to say goodbye and gave me a white silk scarf for ‘safe travels’. He was going to walk all the way back to Khumjung to help his parents build a new house. We said our goodbyes and parted. He was a great guy but I felt totally emasculated by him.

At seven a.m. a siren sounded to indicate the imminent arrival of a plane. Not only was it clear in Lukla, but conditions in Kathmandu were good too. The plane landed and passengers got off while porters hurried to offload baggage and hurl ours on. Meanwhile someone constantly rotated the propellers manually so that they wouldn’t freeze up.

The engines roared and we started hurtling down the slope towards the drop. At the last moment the plane went up the ramp and was catapulted into the void. Everyone screamed, as the plane appeared to almost come to a standstill in mid-air. Then, somehow, it got some invisible traction and we were off. People started breathing again and unclenching their fists. The fat woman next to me let go of my arm and I felt blood start to flow to my fingers again. I looked out of the little window at the snowy peaks to my right. As I did I could almost swear that I saw a large hairy creature, about eight feet tall and covered in a reddish-brown hair. As I stared the creature raised its right hand and extended two fingers in the international sign of dismissal. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, but the mountains had disappeared and we were enveloped in soft white clouds that would carry us back to Kathmandu and the drudgery of the known world.