Namaste global fairy tale hunters, I hope you are continuing to enjoy our adventure as I hunt for fairy tales of the yeti in Nepal. Mission control, back in the UK, tells me that we have had over 1000 visitors to our website. If you have recently found us then welcome aboard, and please join the crew by sending your ideas and artwork via the contact link.

I’m back in Kathmandu, which is full of thunder storms and torrents of water, but just for now I’m going to tell you about what happened last week with a dungeon.

After lots of exciting meetings and interviews with artists who specialise in folk tales and children’s stories I took a mission from Mr. Kesar Lall (you can articles about him on the site too) and left for the torrents of the Trisuli River Valley. Soon I was clambering over rocks and spanning the cascades on rope bridges.

A night on the river bank, with dreams full of jumping fish and then a morning of an ancient path of 3000 stone steps up to the Palaces of Nuwakot. This is the Palace of King that concurred Nepal hundreds of years ago. Do you remember the ruins we discovered in Guansahar? Well this King was responsible for them. It is here that he made his prisoners build nine stories of dungeons. Can you imagine the footsteps in the snow?

Here in this secluded mountain top village rests the oldest temple in Nepal. No one knows when it was made. It is covered in pictures and carvings I dare not show you!

Thankfully the current guards did not put me in the dungeons and I escaped to a local farm garden where I was surrounded by a paradise of flowering banana palms, humming birds and all the delights of a Royal King.

The valley is quite now except for the raging river far below. I walked for three more days criss-crossing the valley, staying in local village house relying on my broken Nepalese to find food and shelter.

I climbed countless steps and then more steps only to find the forts of modern day guards, as the border crossing with Tibet and China rises less than twenty miles away. The morning mists concealed the echoes of chain gangs building new bridges through the mountains.

I get the impression the yeti stories are still here though. I discovered that his was the valley of the stories of ghosts and dungeons, of prisoners and hidden magic. Someone keeps leaving me clues at every turn.

Don’t worry I found two more stories and they are very special indeed. They are safe in my treasure pot and I will tell them to you soon enough. For now the sun sets behind the national plant of Nepal in a Kings paradise garden (I wonder if you can tell what it is?).

I returned back to Kathmandu because it was fast approaching the full moon and the end of Swastani month. This is a special festival all about one story which takes a whole Luna month to read. To find out if I made it you will have to search for the article.

This will be my last week in Nepal. How time has flown bye so quickly I struggle to fathom. So many new fairy tale hunters have joined us on the way it is difficult to think of a number. Before I leave there is plenty for me to do. I must leave now to go to Life Vision Academy fort their latest art workshop (you can find out by reading the Dho cholecha article). After Nepal, you ask? Well, keeping watching this space and you’ll find out.

What brought us together to be sat in a peaceful garden one Saturday afternoon in north Kathmandu? I full of questions and carrying a treasure chest full of children’s creative ideas, pinned together by nothing but imagination and wonder at the mysteries of the Yeti. You surrounded by the plants you have tended, your family raised by stories spanning a life that is bound by nearly a century. Our talk is overflowing with adventure, discovery and loss, of ancient Kings and their castles and Fairy Tale hunting.

A greeting again, from the Fairy Tale Hunter and it is my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Keasar Lall. Born in the 1920’s he has spent his entire life collecting folk tales from the length and breadth of Nepal and most importantly for us he has specialised in discovery tales of the Yeti. We can try to conjure in our minds the images of his adventures that took place before Nepal even had roads. We are very fortunate to meet him on our journey and I hope that you can spend some time reading his inspiring books. Below is a short article for you, of how we spent the afternoon discussing why we hunt for fairy tales and what we have found.

I asked Mr. Lall what he did when he met people and how he recorded their stories. You have to remember that when he started his collecting adventures it was a long time ago. Some of the people he met were not used to strangers from far away visiting their hidden villages in the mountains. Sometimes they spoke very differently or were frightened or amazed at technology such as tape recorders. So Mr. Lall had to be very patient and inventive when meeting new communities. One of the most useful things in his “Bag of Tricks” was the stories his was carrying to tell others. If he could tell a story then other people would remember their stories. It reminded me that it was similar with us, using the stories that the children in UK had put in my “Bag of Tricks” to tell the children around the world. Mr. Lall was interested to know of the art of Fairy Tale writing in the UK and he remembered that the Fairy Tales hunted by The Brothers Grimme from Germany, had amazed and inspired him when he was a child. One of his favourite stories as a child was Hansel and Gretel.

When Mr. Lall became older he started his work as a writer by having the confidence to send stories over the mountains and across the jungles all the way to India. His first works were printed in newspapers far away from his home in Delhi. He noticed that sometimes people were not telling children stories anymore and he quickly became passionate to stop the old folk stories from being lost forever. These were the stories that had been past to children from parents, grandparents and great grand-parents over generations for hundreds and thousands of years. This quest became his life’s work and has resulted in many books and travels across the world.

Even though Mr. Lall has passed on his collection of sketch books and reports from his travels to the Society of Nepal Folklore he still had a special bookshelf at home with his books. We spent a long time looking at his amazing collected works. As I was passed each copy I wondered at all the hard work that had gone into each one, the mountains and valleys crossed and the places he had to find to stay the night. Several time he worked with illustrators who would draw pictures to accompany the tales he had discovered. Mr. Lall said that pictures were a wonderful way of telling stories, though he was very surprised about the results when people from other countries had tried to imagine what Nepal and its people looked like with-out even visiting. Several of his books had been printed in different languages so the whole world could have access to the tales.

I was very privileged to be shown Mr. Lall’s latest work. He showed me a new manuscript for his latest book on folk stories and his creative Poems. He was even able to help me with an unfinished “Dho-cholecha” I had found. Dho-cholecha is a type and a collection of local Newari children story telling. You can find this story in a featured article where it was the theme in a creative workshop at Life Vision Academy, which enabled the story to be passed onto another generation.

Too soon the sun had passed from the garden and I left for the busy streets of Kathmandu. If I am lucky I may return on another afternoon to Mr. Lalls amazing world of Fairy Tale adventures.

Mr. Lall has kindly contributed some of his work to support us in our project and you can find his writing and creative ideas in featured articles on the web-site. There is brief collection of related poems, “The Dho-cholecha” story and something very special to do with our quest at yetifairytales.com. Take a look at the site’s book shelf to find some of his books, use the links we have supplied for more direction via book publishers, or look the titles up on the internet for your-self.

This article was completed in last week of January 2012 by the Fairy Tale Hunter who was very grateful for the support of Mr. Lall’s family, the staff of Ratna Pustak Bhandar and the Horizon book shop.

There once was a kingdom and it was ruled by a king with beautiful long hair.

Every day he would command that a woman of the land would come to his palace and comb his hair. However every time a woman came she was never to be seen again.

One day a woman arrived at the palace to comb his hair, but when she started to comb his hair she discovered that the King had horns under his hair. After she finished combing his hair the king said that he would have to kill her because she knew his secret that he had horns. She pleaded with the King not to kill her.

The King said that he would spare her life, but only if she stayed in the palace and told him a story that would never end. So very day she combed his hair and told him a story. The story she told was very cunning as it always ended back at the beginning. So the story began and finished at the watering well and thus repeated and repeated for many days. When the King realised that the story would repeat again and again for ever he said the she could leave the palace, but that she must come back every day and comb his hair. He still commanded that she should tell know one his secret under sentence of death.

The woman kept the secret for a long time until she could bare it no longer and one day when she was in the country she came upon a hole in the earth. She cupped her hands and spoke the secret of the King’s horns into the whole. Having done so, she returned home very relieved and calm.
The years passed and in the hole a piece of bamboo grew. A passing man cut the piece of wood and made it into a flute, however when he played the flute it only said that the king had horns! He tried to play the flute again, but the same happened. Even when he tried three times it would only speak of the king’s secret.

Over time everyone got to hear the flute telling the secret. Eventually the King discovered the rumour and he summoned the woman to his palace asked her how everyone knew his secret. The woman said that she had only spoken to a hole in the ground, so the king asked the people how they knew and the people said that they had been told the story by a flute.

And that is all that can be remembered of the story today….. ( from an evening with Sareeta of Patan, 2012)
The story ends in this way….

It I said that a lama, hearing the tale came to the city and performed a dance dressed in a mask in front of the palace. On hearing the dance the King went to watch wear upon the lama killed the horned King with an arrow concealed in his sleeve.

This story was retold by Kesar Lall, when meeting him one afternoon in Kathmandu (2012). He was told the story by a Sherpa in the mountains and he included it in his book “The Origin of Alcohol and Other Stories” (1992).

There once existed a very old gold trade route to the mountains and over the years many people had set off to journey on that path and not returned home. It so happened that at one time five hundred merchants set out to follow the path to the mountains on business.

Some days into their journey they came upon a forest and in that forest they choose to stay with the local women. They stayed in the woman’s house and fell asleep. When they were sleeping a ghost appeared and told the leader of the merchants that the women were not human and that they have captured many travellers of the past tied a rope around them and locked them in a building. Also that when new travellers arrive they capture them and then kill and eat the old ones they already have.

The leader awoke and told the rest of the merchants that they must leave the house, but two hundred and fifty said that they did not believe the leader and that they would stay. So in the night two hundred and fifty left and started for home leaving from the other side of the forest, but their path was blocked by a giant river. They are become very worried for their lives.

At that time there were three known parts of earth Junbudip, Suaarnadip and Tamrapurnidip. A large white horse that travelled between the lands came to the river and said that he was crossing the river to Junbudip and that if the people wanted to cross with him then they could ride on his back.

The people did this, but the woman of the forest followed and called from the bank for them to stay. Every man that turned his head fell into the water and drowned until only the leader was left. He returned home with only his life and lived to become king of Kathmandu.

All was not over however and some-time later a woman from far away arrived in the city with a child claiming that she was the Kings bride from the mountains. The King denied all knowledge of the woman and tied the woman to a rock.

To avenge the King’s action the ghost women came to the city and killed the king.
(This story has been kindly adapted from evening with Sareeta Sanu, Patan and an afternoon with Kesar Lall, Kathmandu. 2012).
This story relates to the legend which is illustrated in a picture kept and only displayed for two weeks a year in Durba Square, Temple, Kathmandu. The people of Kathmandu still bring rice water to the temple of the woman that brought her child from the mountains. The strong horse with a wide back appears in a similar story where the merchant travellers are told of impending doom not by a ghost, but by a pre-incarnation of the Lord Buddha that appears inside a burning oil lamp that will not extinguish. The three known realms of the earth Junbudip, Suaarnadip and Tamrapurnidip correspond to Nepal/Tibet/India, Malaysia and Thailand. The strong horse may relate to the symbol of Lung ta, a horse that bears special powers and appears through-out the region, from Buddhist prayer flags to the emblem of Mongolia.

Greetings again from the Fairy Tale Hunter and his fellow adventurers in the Guild of Fairy Tale Hunters, surfers gliding bye us, twitters tweeting, bloggers-a-blogging and artists scratching in the earth.

This last week has been full of fun and adventure. It started with creating the Dancing Yeti story at Life Vision Academy. You can find out what happened in the videos and special articles we made. If you want to find all the workshops then take a look in the teacher’s cupboard for more information.

I was whisked away to the musical side of life in my search for fairy tales by street performers who passed on their stories in rhythm and song. They also showed me their music sketch books, which the Guild of Fairy Tale Musicians are having fun using. Look out for the results in our sound cloud recordings coming your way next week.

As you can tell this week has also been the week for children. Festivals abound where everyone is celebrating the fruits of life.

Bookshop to Bookshop, Publisher to writer I have met and interviewed many. Hold your breath for the many tales to come. The artists are busy bees drawing pictures for our web-site.

At every corner and stepping stone, via towns of wood carving, door step offerings to the thousand gods and goddesses, I am showered in gifts of help in our adventure.

My thoughts turn artistic adventures of the past, reflections in water journeys, the paths of our earth and the fire that lights our way.

A week overflowing with artist’s creativity. Their invention and creativity to collect the new seeds and plant them for a next generation to watch them bloom, in every hidden garden or cascading terraced field. You will see the fruits of their work soon and discover that we can find Fairy Tales at every turn.

Every door is opened to us if we sit long enough to wait.

Third week of January 2012.

Greetings fairy tale hunters across of the world, as we in the guild continue to hunt down fairy tales of the yeti. I hope you are enjoying the articles and the video galleries. Mission control, back in the UK, tells me that their world map is filling with fairy tale hunters from every continent. So join the guild of fairy tale hunters by sending your ideas via the contact links.

This past week has been full of new discoveries and yeti clues. There are two new fairy tales, which I have discovered by interviewing people and you can find them in separate articles. Though for now I must tell you about by journey to the ruined castle. I started by rumble-tumble and twisty-twining my way to Bandipur, on the roof of a bus and clinging to the back of a jeep.

The eagles appear to be following me as I arrived in this peaceful sanctuary that is Bandipur. The candle lit cobbled street of this ancient Tibetan trading route greet me in a furry of children spinning cart wheels and singing songs. The clear morning air opens across a skyline of distant mountains as the Annapurna calls to me of its secrets. Here large bats sleep in giant caves and flower garlands flutter from the craggy temple peaks. A much needed haven that has taken my dreams back to West of China. I suppose if I was a fairy tale giant I may just be able to see over the peaks to that land of candle lit songs. Evenings full of the Arabian night’s tales from my meeting with Sasha the Rug Collector. He wove the night stars with adventure and romance from the Almond Blossom of Moroccan Esowera, crazy spinning back streets of Mexican Oaxaca, Macedonian citadels and feverish bartering over steaming pots of spicy masala pepper tea. Such place we must go to next for they are the warp and weft that is the fairy tale tapestry.

Onward and down into Dumri and on past the exposed bellies of overturned lorries to the jingle of the latest Hindi pop music to Besishahar, and then off the map and a kneeing busting hike up the thousands of rocky broken-teeth steps into the jungle of the snow leopards and the garden slopes of the Kings of old. This is where the kingdoms four hundred years ago took refuge from the malaria drenched valleys below, where brother fought with brother over the crown of the known mountain lands that became Nepal. And now all that stands are the ruins hidden in the jungle. Here I was greeted by Shamser and ceremonially welcomed to the drum beat, prayers and national anthem of Nepal at the Diamond Hill Academy of Gaunshsar-1.

Our days were filled with fun and laughter as the students in the school of the ancient capital of the Kings joined the hunt with their imaginative stories of the mountains through the windows of their school.

The roof of the world was ablaze at night with fiery lightning and the giant kilometre deep valley below boomed with angry thunder. Rained pounded on the metal roof as inside Shamser’s family and friends, plus a fellow adventurer from Seattle and I danced to traditional Nepalese songs by the beat of a long hand drum.

The day dawned golden and clear and I searched to complete my mission I had been given by the school children guiding my hunt for fairy tales. Leopard tracks took me to the Kings ruined temple, his long forgotten fortress and the silent remains of the village, its round houses now gripped by the roots of the forest.

If there were any yeti kept in the dungeons they had escaped back into those mountains a long time before I had arrived. The stories of the people were now only held in the sounds of the flutes or locked in the secrets of the bees.

Let us never be down hearted fairy tale hunters. Let us sing as we listen to the whispering wind and the creaking of the branches and let us share the dreams of the wild stormy nights as we tread lightly in wild footsteps. On we shall go, we will carry our journey into new realms, searching for new stories and uncovering new clues in our adventure.

Today the children of Life Vision Academy listened to the fairy tale hunter’s stories from the mountains (you can find them for your-self in the latest articles from his adventures). After the stories and questions the students had fun all the way till sun set creating the giant yeti costume and its story below.

The Story of The Dancing Yeti’s head, body, arms, hands, legs and feet.
Many years ago there was a forest. In the forest there was many ghost heads. There was one very, very big head and it was the head of a yeti.

It had two horns and two eyes

It has long, long teeth and talks like a man. In the past it used to eat small children. Do you like the yeti head? And then………

There was a boy in the forest, he was very strong.

His muscles were strong, as were his bones, skin, stomach and his back bone. He was wearing a black jacket and inside it was red and he looked very beautiful. And then…….
The boy hid in the trees of the forest and saw some wings and arms. The wings and arms were searching for their body, but they could not find it. Then through the forest came the body and joined the wings and arms and they started to fly. And then……

The boy saw from his hiding place the hands. The hands were very long and big and strong. He thought that they were very dangerous. The hands were covered in fur and had long nails. And then….

The boys looked at the legs. They were walking from place to place, running, jumping and even swimming. And then….
The boy saw the feet. They were playing. He noticed that each foot had fingers, ten on each one! It was very cold and so the feet were wearing big socks. The boy looked at his own feet rapped in his slippers and thought they were very small by yeti standards.


As he watched from his hiding place the boy saw the whole yeti body dancing about making giant yeti sock footprints in the snow. Look at the dancing yeti in the forest….

Everyone had to imagine something very big, something you went into, something scary, something extremely small, something you were able to get out of and finally something very nice and special. After imagining all these things we had to link them together in any order we wanted to, by creating a story. We had lots of extra fun making props for the films we created of the final results. See if you can find the finished films on the website.

Cinderella
Once upon a time there lived a young girl, whose name was Cinderella. She lived with her father and two sisters. She was a very beautiful girl, but her were not. They made her do all the work in the home. She looked like the servant of the house.

One day a king announced that there would be a party and they were all invited. The two sisters were very happy. They talked about the prance and the party.

Then the day came and Cinderella had to stay and clean and polish shoes. The two sisters went to the party and Cinderella was crying.

Four Potatoes
The man’s potato story.
Once upon a time there was four potatoes in the soil. One man came looking for potatoes and he took all four potatoes.

The man went to his house and he fell into a deep sleep. Then a snake went into the house to search about. The snake searched and found what it thought was a potato, but it was a bird. The bird hit the snakes and flew away. When the man awoke he found a flag and he took the flag and waved it high in the sky.
The snake’s potato story.
Once upon a time there was a snake. He was very hungry. he wanted to eat frog. He was very old and he can’t walk fast he had no friends.

One day the eagle came to eat snake. The eagle saw the snake and the snake was afraid. The eagle catches the snake and the snake died.

The Ant.
Once upon a time there was an Ant. Ant went leaf and then Ant fell down from leaf!
Then again Ant start to walk and went to the forest.

In the forest there was a ghost.
The ghost has only one horn left after battlers with man.
He saved the Ant from harm with humans.

The story of one girl
Once upon a time there was a girl. She was very beautiful. Her name was Vunti. She was very small. In the village all will love her.
One day she was sleeping in her bed when a thief came! The thief killed Vunti! After that he through her in the river. All the villagers were very sad.

So we all have to be happy and beautiful in keeping our memory of Vunti.
The end.
After we finished the workshop four of the seniors went to the local internet café. It was the first time they had ever seen the internet and we had a look at our pictures on the Hunting for fairy tales of the Yeti web-site.

First week of January 2012.

Hello adventurous fairy tale hunters across the globe. Thank you for following my journey as we continue to hunt down fairy tales of the yeti. I am still in Nepal and have enjoyed an amazing two weeks of working with the children of Life Vision Academy, in Kaushaltar, which is between Bhaktapur and Kathmandu. Please take a look at the workshop articles and the picture galleries which are bursting with creative images. The hunt is generating lots of discussion and all at mission control are pleased to hear your thoughts. So join us by sending your ideas to andy@yetifairytaels.com or via the links on the site.

It is with pleasure that we welcome fairy tale hunters from the Netherlands who will be adding music to the site and they have found in the past that when stories are difficult to find in books then they are told and re-told via music and singing. I will add this to my box of tricks as a special tool. Also a fairy tale hunter from Florida has joined us as a photographer and he will be uploading images from hunting in the foothills of Everest.

So much to tell you of the last week away in the mountains I find it difficult to un freeze my sketch book pages. I started here in Bhaktapur.

This town is a fairy tale come to life. It reminded me of the days back when horse pulled the carts through the streets of Dickensian England. Cars were space ships and electric lamps only the work of magic wands. Here treasure pots are made to the sound of morning temple singing

Bhaktapur is the home of Dragons of all shapes and sizes

Then it was riding on bus roofs (taking care to duck the bamboo) on switch backs high into the mountains. Where I came to view Everest in the golden sunrise holding the wings of circling eagles, such are the headlands of Nagarkot above the clouds.

Onward…..and sardine packed into helter-skelter buses I twisted my way higher and higher to Dhulikhel, Charikot and the ancient Kalinchowk. Now I had to walk, the air thinning and the flora and fauna transforming into mountain buffalo rings, their bells calling to the “happy queen” ferns. Through the clouds and into the snow past ruined settlements with the helpful pointing of Sherpa families I made it to the summit.

The evening cold with icicles out-side, brought the happy dancing inside the wooden long house around a fire with new friends from distant Bhaktapur.

I searched to complete my mission I had been given by the school children guiding my hunt for fairy tales and I was in luck! On the side of an old and ancient house deep in the pine woods, hiding in the sparkling snow I found this

I set off to the warmth of the valley full of wonder about the creatures that lived to the sound of the mountain bells when I came across maybe another clue

I followed these footprints for over two hours as they led me to the warmth of the valley below. I never found there owner, what stories they could have told me.

When I was back in Dhulikhel I told stories to the local children of my mountain adventure. They had great fun looking at my pictures.

Back in the hussle and bussle of the city of Kathmandu the mountains seem a world away. I will be travelling west next week to the mountain range of the Annapurna and there I will be working with another Nepalese school in Gaunsahar, deep in the depths of the countryside two hours walk from Besisahar.

Continue to uphold our moto in “Protecting Innocence and Suspending Disbelief” as we the international tradition of fairy tales from mountain top to treasure filled valley.