Pangboche

You probably get the best view outside of being on the summit of Mount Everest from the summit of La Bochere.

So what we did, we went to Pangboche and then we went and did our puja there because we missed the Everest puja.

So I did a really interesting puja with the monk and a lot of Sherpenis, which are like the village Sherpa women.

And it was incredible.

Yet those slower realities are where the history becomes most interesting.

The story of the Pangboche relics is one of the clearest examples.

Pangboche is a village in Nepal's Khumbu region, associated with a monastery and with the mountain routes of the Everest area.

During the 20th century, its monastery became known in Western accounts for objects said to be connected with the Yeti.

One was described as a hand or hand-like skeletal relic.

Another was a scalp-like object.

The hand story has often been told too simply.

It is sometimes said that the Pangboche hand was tested and found human, as if a single intact monastery object had been removed, preserved with secure documentation, and analysed in one definitive laboratory event.

I won't tell you the name of my village either.

It sits within a few hours' walk off Pangboche, if that means anything to you.

Small enough that it wasn't worth marking on the old trekking maps.

But ten years ago, when the usual villagers started choking with foreigners arguing over Wi-Fi passwords at 6,000 feet, the guiding company started routing new clients through places like mine instead.

Zamba never married.

He was young and gifted and gone before he could become anything as ordinary as a husband.

But six months after he vanished on that mountain, a boy was born in a village, a few hours' walk off of Pangboche.

It was a love child born to a woman who never named the father to anyone.

They had spent 1 million pounds.

Unfortunately for them, the locals in the village of Pangboche had just what they needed: a Yeti scalp, kept on display inside their monastery.

At least, they claim it was a Yeti scalp.

A few members of the team examined and photographed the artifact, but were unable to determine its origin.

For the next outing, Tom Slick partnered with another oil tycoon named F. Kirk Johnson to help fund the trip, and in 1958, the Slick-Johnson expedition was underway.

Unfortunately, still no Yeti.

One of the Sherpas claimed to have seen the creature, and the team was allowed to view up close and photograph the alleged 350-year-old Yeti scalps kept as relics inside the monasteries at Pangboche and Thyangboche.

But that was about it.