TOPIC – KEYNOTE
Yeti or Not?
Could the yeti really exist? Long dismissed as a myth by outsiders, those living up in the mountains tell a very different story.
Andrew Benfield was intrigued and set out across the Himalayas to try to uncover the truth, accompanied by his much more sceptical friend Richard.
It quickly became clear that what most outsiders think of as the yeti is just a western invention, dreamed up to sell newspapers and B-movies. But one that’s based on a Himalayan reality that is a lot stranger than fiction, and one that’s very much alive and kicking today.
Their planned single expedition turned into an epic multi-year quest across India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar that ended up overturning just about everything they thought they knew.
Andrew tells the intriguing story of their adventures, including how they unexpectedly ended up becoming a hit BBC podcast!
BIO
Born and raised in a small English village, Andrew contracted the travel bug early, infected by his parents’ tales of driving around Australia in a camper van in the 1960s. He says that explains why he quit his first decent job in an investment bank in London to go live on a communal farm in the Middle East instead.
Over the next few years, he taught English in the Sudan, helped people grow better rice in Madagascar, studied Tai Chi in Hong Kong, and then got a posting with a diplomatic mission in India. He subsequently became a kind of freelance fixer, roaming across Africa, Asia and Latin America advising embassies on how to do things better.
Finally deciding to settle down, he set up a boutique hotel in Bali. But it wasn’t long before the itchy feet were back as he got seduced by the call of a magical land called Burma. So he upped sticks once again, writing a book about it this time: “The Wrong Way Round – How Not to Travel to Burma by Motorcycle”.
Andrew is a firm believer in listening to local voices more when we travel, a belief that led him on an epic five-year quest across the Himalayas in search of the truth behind legends of the abominable snowman. It was a quest that also caught the eye of the BBC, who turned it into the hit podcast and radio series, “Yeti”.
Andrew is now based in Bangkok and continues his adventures – most recently to Antarctica – while also writing for Nikkei Asia and teaching Tai Chi and meditation. He is a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Geographical Society.