"Yeah, I had fight with him," says the hunter. "He has wool, black wool, and these breasts..." And he wolf-whistles. His companion, a chubby man in a sizeable skullcap, butts in. "Oh yes, I was up in the glade, and he attacked my donkey. It was very frightening. He looked like a wild man — or a clever monkey." The sightings occur in the same places. Regularly. 

We continue to drive upwards. Snow-capped peaks shine luminously under the beating spring sun. "This is Yeti village." The car enters the impoverished village of Tavish. Sheep block the small bridge. They are not cloud-white and fluffy like our sheep. They are yellow, ragged and small. Groups of little boys flit here and there. The car kicks up dust and swerves violently as we pass over a stone. The mud-brick houses have wooden roofs; electricity arrived three years ago and works for only an hour or two a night. The homes remind me of Van Gogh's Potato Eaters. I am inside a rustic genre painting. A stench hangs in the air. 

We get out and turn to the first man we see. Khikmotill's clothes are dyed red from animal slaughter. He wears a thin, sky-blue smock and traditional striped cloth trousers. Tanned, eyes faintly Asiatic, he shakes my hand. "My cousin saw the Yeti, four days ago, with his younger brother out picking wild onions. He couldn't speak for days he was so scared." This unnerves me. Khikmotill summons him. Assodin is 15, has a small nose, spectacular mono-brow and a jet-black crew-cut. He wears a Reebok T-shirt of dubious quality. 

Surob translates for me. "He says he saw Yeti three kilometres into mountain, and he hear whistling, and he says he saw Yeti climb over the stones, that Yeti looks like clever monkey, that he do whatever you do — you scratch your nose, he scratch his nose. Yeti then comes, he runs away." I ask the boy to draw the Yeti. It is an unexpectedly childish drawing, a box with stick arms. Surob is surprised. "He saw Yeti where I saw Yeti footprint in snow." I ask them to take me up there. 

We begin to trudge up the isolated glade. Rock precipices rise smoothly skyward. A burning white mountain stands at the faraway head of the narrow valley. "This spot is where hunters saw him. We see footprints in sand of him, in the spring, then in the snow," Khikmotill explains. Both he and his cousin seem nervous as we press forward. Further up, uninhabited plateaus stretch for miles on either side of the valley. The villagers claim they have discovered ancient stone circles there. There is tension in the group. The boy jumps from rock to rock, with the agility of a goat, over a gushing stream fuelled by melt-water. 

"Come on city boy." 

I grab branches, bend trees to scramble over the water. Woods give way to brown thickets. There are stings and cuts on my hand. We continue upwards. Out of breath after two kilometres, I question Khikmotill and the boy. "It could be wild man, but it looks like monkey. We don't know, we see it." The boy swears on the Koran he is not lying. When I suggest oaths are not always foolproof, Surob erupts.