N. A. Tombazi's Yeti Sighting near the Zemu Glacier, Sikkim Himalaya (1925)

1925. N. A. Tombazi was leading a small photographic and climbing expedition to the southern glaciers of Kangchenjunga, in the Sikkim Himalaya. He was a Greek photographer and geologist, born in St Petersburg. He worked in Calcutta for the Ralli Brothers trading company and lived in Darjeeling. He was 31. He is described as a member of the Royal Geographical Society.

The spot is usually given as near the Zemu Glacier. Tombazi's own route points to the south side, below the Zemu Gap. He claimed to have climbed Zemu Gap Peak that year by the south route, though no photographs were taken at the summit.

About 15,000 ft. His porters saw it first and called him over. Tombazi looked out across the snow. "The intense glare and brightness of the snow prevented me from seeing anything for the first few seconds; but I soon spotted the 'object' referred to."

The figure was 200 to 300 yards away. "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes." It showed up dark against the snow. As far as he could make out, it wore no clothes. Then it moved into some thick scrub and was lost to view. The whole encounter lasted about a minute. He had no time to get a camera or binoculars.

About two hours later, on the way down, the party found tracks in the snow. They were "similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by four inches wide at the broadest part of the foot." Five toes and the instep were perfectly clear. The heel was indistinct. Tombazi counted "fifteen such footprints at regular intervals ranging from one-and-a-half to two feet." His verdict was firm. "The prints were undoubtedly those of a biped, the order of the spoor having no characteristics whatever of any imaginable quadruped." No casts or photographs of the prints are recorded.

A few days later, on the return journey, Tombazi made inquiries at Yoksum. He learned that no man had gone in the direction of Jongri since the beginning of the year. News services picked up the story. Newspapers around the world printed fantastic versions and roughly doubled the size of the footprints. Tombazi complained about it. He set down his own account in Account of a Photographic Expedition to the Southern Glaciers of Kangchenjunga in the Sikkim Himalaya.

Tombazi did not believe in the snowman. He thought the figure was most likely a wandering Buddhist hermit, or a member of an isolated community of ascetics, like the Christian hermits of the Syrian Desert. The primatologist John Napier later argued that the tracks pointed to a bear, citing the heel shape and size. General explanations for Yeti reports include Himalayan brown bears, Asiatic black bears and langur monkeys. Later cryptid writers claimed his guides called the creature the "Kanchenjunga Demon," though that detail has not been traced to Tombazi's own text.

The case remains one of the most cited early Western eyewitness accounts of the Yeti. It came four years after Howard-Bury found tracks at the Lhakpa-la during the 1921 Everest reconnaissance. It came 26 years before Eric Shipton's footprint photographs of 1951. A sceptical witness. A fleeting figure. Fifteen prints in the snow. That is still the whole of the evidence.