We finally land in Kathmandu, one of the most charming and vibrant cities on earth. Located a mile above sea level, Kathmandu is a crowded mash of religions, architecture and ethnicities. It's the kind of place that raises your pulse as you walk through the streets, from the sheer excitement of being someplace so exotic.

We're here looking for evidence of the Yeti. One of the most famous creatures in the pantheon of cryptozoology, sightings of this elusive creature date back to time immemorial. There are an array of theories about what exactly people are seeing here in the Himalayas, with many experts writing off the Yeti as simply a brown bear, or nothing more than folklore and superstition. The fact of the matter, though, is that people in remote villages on both the Tibetan and Nepali side of the Himalayas have been giving strikingly consistent descriptions of the same creature for thousands of years. Here, among the endless ridges and forests on the trail to Everest, it isn't hard to imagine that the Yeti might actually exist.

In order to get into the Himalayas, we have to charter a flight to the high-mountain town of Lukla. The appropriately named "Yeti Airlines" manages a fleet of decaying Twin Otter aircraft that entered service more than 30 years ago and have been used every second of every day since then. The flight takes only about 35 minutes, but it's memorable. Along with seating about 15 people, our plane is crammed with gear, cases of Everest Beer, lumber, and just about anything else the pilot can jam into the cabin. The indescribable view masks the nearly omnipresent signs that the plane is on the verge of simply giving up and falling apart in mid-flight.