Balpakram tiger-census yeti sighting (Mande Barung)

Balpakram National Park lies in the South Garo Hills district of Meghalaya, India, near the Bangladesh border. It covers 220 square kilometres. A huge canyon stretches several miles across, rimmed with very deep and treacherous cliffs, and jungle covers the floor below. For generations, people in the Garo Hills have spoken of the Mande Barung, often described as a giant ape-like creature with dark fur. A village shaman, a hunter, a teacher and farmers have all reported tracks, calls or glimpses over the decades.

April 2002. A team of 14 officials was carrying out a census of tigers in Balpakram. One of them was a forestry officer named James Marak. Somewhere in the park, the team saw what they thought was a yeti.

That is almost all that survives. No height. No colour. No account of how it moved, how far away it stood or how long it stayed in view. The exact spot was never recorded. Even the size of the team varies. Some accounts say 14 officials in all. Another says Marak and 14 colleagues. One blog later turned them into 14 scientists.

The sighting reached a wider audience in June 2008, through a BBC report by Alastair Lawson. Lawson met Dipu Marak, a documentary filmmaker from Tura and a passionate yeti believer. "We have so many reports of sightings that I sincerely believe there is some sort of huge creature in the Garo hills," he said. "But like the Loch Ness monster this creature is obviously not fond of giving too many photo opportunities."

The Divisional Forest Officer, Shri PR Marak, denied that his department was uninterested in the sightings or too lazy to investigate them. Such a creature, he reportedly said, was "an important part of our culture". A year earlier, villager sightings near Rongcekgre had led district magistrate Samphat Kumar to announce a study into claims of "some hairy giants similar to the elusive Bigfoot". No outcome has surfaced.

Dipu Marak gave Lawson hairs linked to a separate sighting by a forester in 2003. They went to Oxford Brookes University, where Ian Redmond and colleagues compared them with bear, yak, orangutan and gorilla samples. Microscopy and DNA settled it. Himalayan goral. A goat-antelope.

Dipu Marak held firm. "While these results are discouraging, it does not affect my firm conviction that there is a yeti-like creature out there," he said. "It has been seen too often for it to be dismissed as nothing more than a myth."

A local wildlife biologist blamed media hysteria and pointed to the promotional interest of the Achik Tourism Society. He suggested Asiatic black bears or Malayan sun bears, whose footprints can look human. Sceptic Steven Novella argued that cultural expectation shapes what people see. Believing is seeing. One unconfirmed account says the Forest Department put the sightings down to a bear, though it may blend this case with another. Nobody has accused the census team of a hoax.

In 2010 the Centre for Fortean Zoology took baited camera traps into Nokrek National Park and found tracks with a broader heel than a human's. The 2002 census remains one of the few Mande Barung reports from a team of forestry officials. It is also one of the least described. Whatever crossed their path in Balpakram, the record holds only one word for it. Yeti.