Yeti sighted at Zaluk, Sikkim in 2004

 

BY SHITAL PRADHAN

I was at Zaluk last Friday, the day most of the couples across the globe were busy celebrating Valentine's Day. More or less an exciting adventure was awaiting us when we came to know that there was a Yeti sighting at this remote place in 2004 in April. Zaluk is a small place where the population is below 300 and the world-famous Changu Lake is an hour and a half drive from Rongli Bazaar. We were a five-member team myself, Praveen, Rocky, Swarup, and Beren.

The video above is a short interview I took where the prime eye witness Nar Bahadur Sunar confirms that he along with other 10 labourers and a GREF Officer had come across a Yeti in April of 2004 while going for daily work. Sunar a farmer now was working as a baidar then. They were in a vehicle and the "animal man" as he was called was on the other side of the road along the Valley walking on two feet along with the bushes of pareng ( a bamboo variety). The distance between them was around 200 to 250 meters. They saw the back portion of the animal for over half an hour and suddenly it vanished around the bushes. It was noted that for over a few days, the army helicopter did have a vain search over that particular region but nothing more could be known.

Such an incident was not known till then and also not heard after that but the people of Zaluk also have confirmed that at particular times they do hear strange voices coming from the nearby valley. Well, the people who saw it claim it to be a "Sokpa" as Yeti is better called in this part of the land. For them, that animal was not a bear as it is commonly found in that region and they could identify with it. Another interesting part of the story is that a few days after the incident, the villagers did find footsteps on the marshy land near the overflowing water that was measured as something like "from an elbow joint to a fingertip" long. Nar Bahadur Sunar said a water pipe was recovered by the villagers along with the bushes inside the forest that were crushed and thrown away from the water source so that no man or any other animal could do it.

We talked with Jeena Chettri, daughter of Nar Bhadhur Sunar who added that the the animal was dragging his feet as such they could not realize whether the animal had its feet on the opposite side as it is normally believed. The "thing" had black hair covered all over the body and the length of the hair was as such it looked as if a woman had let free her hair, told Jeena in her own words. Those GREF workers whistled and made a sound to that animal that it hurried inside the bushes, she added. Well, it is too early to say that the animal man those people claimed was not the mysterious Yeti that the whole world is searching for.

I had gone through the wrinkled face and the piercing eye of the man who was in his mid-sixties and believed in his word that the thing he saw along with his daughter and his fellow workers was a Yeti. I do believe him that he could differentiate a bear from an animal they had never seen before that they believed to look more like a human.