Truly great people are great because they have what is called the common touch — the ability to reach out and touch the lives of less fortunate folk and, sometimes, change them if by only offering them something as slender as hope. This story is about a Yeti scalp, a Sherpa family, gifts, and royalty. In the sixties Sir Edmund Hillary launched an expedition to look for the yeti. He didn’t find one but he found a yeti scalp in the village of Khumjung in the high Himalaya which was looked after by the village elder Khunjo Chumbi. After a great deal of persuasion Sir Ed got Khunjo Chumbi to accompany him to America and England bearing with them the sacred yeti scalp for examination by anthropologists. Khunjo took gifts in typical Sherpa tradition for those he would meet. Offerings like yak butter, high altitude beans, home made rice beer, beautiful wooden boxes and things that came from deep within the Sherpa heart.

In fact thanks to Khunjo, Ed, and Desmond Doig who was translator and scribe on the expedition, were overweight on the flight to America and England. In London Khunjo Chumbi insisted on meeting the Queen and her family. So Ed and Desmond accompanied him to Buckingham Palace but the Queen was in Scotland with her family. Khunjo left gifts and Sherpa prayers on rice paper with illustrations of dragons and yetis to protect the Palace. The party returned to Nepal with memories of incredible hospitality and the bad news that the Khumjung yeti scalp was a man made artefact. About a year late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were coming to Nepal and they sent words that they would like to meet Khunjo and his family. The Sherpa and Mrs Chumbi started the long trek to Kathmandu from their mountain fastness.

Mrs Chumbi who was pregnant was proud of the fact that she delivered the baby — a boy — during a lunch stop that Khunjo made, and then they all walked on. The Queen and Prince Phillip were delighted to meet the Chumbis who had bought Sherpa clothes for the Queen and the Prince to try on. In a private room in the British Embassy the Sherpas showed the Royal couple how to wear the gifts. At which point the six-day-old baby woke up for a feeding. While Mrs Chumbi went to a corner of the room to feed the infant, Prince Phillip asked how old the baby was and if he had a name. When Khunjo said he hadn’t thought of one, Prince Phillip said, “Call him Phillip and I’ll be his godfather.” As Phillip grew, messages were exchanged and these joined a picture of the Queen and Prince Phillip on the family altar in Khumjung and Phillip Chumbi grew up knowing that he had a regal protector.

Once, I believe, a Royal scholarship to study forestry was given to Phillip, but the important thing was Khunjo would pray to the Sherpa Gods to give the Royal British couple a long life for honouring his family. Khunjo Chumbi passed away, Phillip is married now and only uses his English name sometimes but he and his family know that should the need ever arise, they have someone to turn to. Prince Phillip’s generosity is still remembered and Khunjo’s prayers for the long life of his son’s benefactors have been answered. No great demands have been made on the Prince, which proves that a noble gesture elevates those that give as much as it forever gratifies those who receive, and no advantage is taken in something so pure and heartfelt.