Thaindian News

Moscow, Sep 15 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Former boxing heavyweight world champion Nikolai Valuev will travel to Russia’s Siberia region to try to find the yeti and “talk to him about life”, an official said.

The spokesman for Siberia’s Kemerovo regional administration said: “Valuev is interested in the phenomenon of yeti, who has been actively searched for in Tashtagol (a town founded in 1939).”

The boxer will spend at least two days in Siberia’s taiga coniferous forest region.

Valuev, who is seven-feet tall and weighs over 140 kg, however, has no intentions to harm the yeti and hunt the creature. He only wants to find him and have a conversation, the spokesman said.

The issue of the possible existence of the yeti in Siberia has been widely discussed.

A blogger even said Valuev is himself the yeti, who once went mountain skiing, got lost and is now trying to find his way home, the spokesman said.

In 2009, the regional administration released a report saying local hunters had spotted “some hairy humanoid creatures with a height of 1.5-2 metres” near the Azass cave in Mount Shoriya, near Siberia’s renowned ski resort, Sheregesh.

The report had a photograph from inside the cave showing the footprint of an unidentified creature.

Experts have said the reports were probably teasers for attracting tourists to the region. Three months after the sensational news, tourism agencies introduced excursions to “Yeti’s Cave”.

The head of the department of anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology in Moscow said no one has ever seen or studied the body of a yeti, although there have been numerous reports of their sightings throughout the world.

–IANS/RIA Novosti
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