A devout Muslim who has studied in Iran, Surob is proud of his country and speaks fluent, eloquent Arabic. He rattles on. "Tajikistan we call small paradise, Tajikistan like the virgin girl, almost all is mountain, many supreme flowers, the herbals..." He has a beautifully maintained black moustache, a goatee he thinks is cool and boyish good looks. "Farsi man most beautiful in world, like me." 

Surob will stake his honour on the Yeti's existence. "I saw his footprints, bigger than the man's, in snow." 

The road slides upwards from Dushanbe and starts to disintegrate. Surob gestures towards a sad-looking town to our right. "That's town where I was born, after collapse Soviet Union, people started banging, stealing, breaking everything, proving they themselves are the Yetis." He bristles when I suggest the Yeti may be a peasant mirage. "They swear on the Koran. Why should they lie? They know nothing, they have nothing, they swear by Allah they have seen it." I back down. 

We pull up at a shack for a pit stop. This is where the valley begins. I am peckish. Soviet-style sweets are displayed in plastic bags. "What's the best one?" I ask in Russian. The proprietor dashes to a side room and brings me a Snickers bar. My guide wants to hurry, but an old man with an unwashed beard and one strikingly yellow tooth asks for a ride up towards his village. Surob asks him if he is from here. "He from here. Now I will gather the informations." 

The peasant knows about the Yeti. "Ten years ago, I saw him. I was climbing a hill to gather firewood and I saw somebody. I go hey, hey, but then he started running towards me. It was the Yeti, covered in black wool, with breasts like the woman's..." 

I ask him to swear on the Koran that he saw the Yeti. Raising his hand to heaven the old man insists and gives me his Islamic word. "I don't know about other people, but I saw it. It was shouting with anger, rarghh, I was shouting with fear, eeee, and I run." The countryside changes dramatically as we talk. The road has become a dirt track. The car is swerving and sidling as it climbs  up the barren gullies. The old man insists he saw the Yeti. Everyone knows somebody who has in the nearby villages. "When I got back to the village, my father started reading the Koran to me, as protection." 

Nature is starting to blossom in rich abundance. Cherry blossom hangs off the crags. Shoots of wild onions sprout out of the dark earth. "Look," says Surob. "Look at the herbals, the Yeti is eating the herbals, this is why he lives here." Coloured tips of wild flowers, blues, reds, purples, grow among the jagged browns, reds and greys of the mountains. Another curve. A stark, barren river valley. "Hey, they saw him too." Surob stops the car and gives traditional greetings to two middle-aged men driving the traditional clapped-out Lada.