As we started to hike through the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, we were both pretty much overawed by the sheer natural beauty and magnificence of the place. Even if we didn’t find any credible yeti stories, the journey itself was still clearly going to be well worth it. Hmm, maybe that could actually be my escape clause, the old “the journey is important as the destination” humdinger.

The awesome scale and power of the nature surrounding us also put everything else in perspective, including ego, worries, and insecurities… Everyone’s equally small in the face of the mountains and the weather, and collaboration not competition is the name of the game if you’re going to survive, yetis or no yetis.

But, then again, that vastness - many parts of which nobody ever sets foot in - again made me think about the topographical possibility for something to exist almost entirely unseen. When I looked at that ridge line, Richard’s argument that “Well, the Bhutanese scientist we interviewed put out 300 camera traps and none of them recorded a yeti,” seemed much easier to convincingly counter.

Especially as he was pretty much completely out of breath by this point.