Yeti

Sherpa and Tibetan Buddhist tradition describes the "Meh-Teh," a powerful, hair-covered being of the high Himalaya, long before Western explorers arrived. The earliest Western account dates to 1832, when B. H. Hodgson published a description of a tall, hair-covered biped seen by porters in Nepal. The legend reached its modern peak in 1951, when British mountaineer Eric Shipton photographed a line of large, humanlike footprints in snow near the Menlung Glacier during an Everest reconnaissance, images that introduced the word "Yeti" to a global audience.

Khumjung village's monastery, near Everest's southern approach, displays a conical "Yeti scalp" said to have been recovered generations ago, a major draw for trekkers and a focal point of decades of expedition interest. Believers cite a long, geographically consistent body of footprint sightings at high altitude, where few other large animals are expected to travel, as evidence of an unclassified Himalayan primate.

A 2017 genetic study of nine purported Yeti specimens (hair, skin, bone, and feces collected from monasteries and expeditions over decades) matched eight to Asian black bears, Himalayan brown bears, or Tibetan brown bears, and one to a dog. Shipton's famous footprint is now widely attributed to an ordinary bear track distorted and enlarged by partial melting. The Khumjung scalp itself was examined as early as 1954, when zoologist Frederic Wood Jones concluded it had been molded from animal hide rather than belonging to any unknown species.

Trekking into the Khumbu region requires a Sagarmatha National Park permit and a local rural municipality permit, arranged through a guide. There is no single "yeti site" to visit.