Creature record / 1944
June 1944. A mountain track near the Nepal border, just below the Singalila Ridge. Lt-Col. Reggie Cooke, his wife Margaret and their porters stopped at a line of prints in soft mud. They were huge. 14 inches heel to toe, left by something walking on two feet. It had come up through the bushes from Nepal, crossed the track and climbed on toward the ridge. The porters had a name for it. The Jungli Admi. The wild man. Cooke laid Margaret's sunglasses beside each print and took photographs. Nobody ever saw the animal. Most later readers blamed a bear. But the pictures came before Eric Shipton's famous yeti photographs of 1951, and they are still cited today.
Reggie Cooke knew the Himalaya. Born in Mussoorie in 1901, Conrad Reginald Cooke worked for Indian Posts and Telegraphs and climbed whenever he could. On 18 November 1935 he reached the summit of Kabru North alone. He was later chosen to lead a planned Everest expedition for late 1940. The war cancelled it.