A 94-year-old ex-German soldier who deserted Hitler's army during World War II is to trek through the Nepalese Himalayas carrying a message of peace for Maoist rebels and hoping to shake hands with a Yeti. "I am a peace lover campaigning for peace and non-violence," Karl Henrik Wagner told AFP. Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1911, Wagner is making his fifth visit to the Hindu pilgrimage site of Muktinath high up in the Himalayas below the north face of Annapurna, since first visiting Nepal 50 years ago.
"I met some Maoist leaders during an earlier trek to Muktinath," said Wagner, photographer and author of a number of books including his latest work, "Birds of Paradise."
"If I meet (them) again during my present trip, I will urge them to renounce violence and killings and follow a path of peace and non-violence," he said.
"I will tell the rebel leaders to renounce violence because violence breeds violence and only love can win the people's hearts," added Wagner, who converted to Buddhism in the mid-1990s.
More than 11,000 people have died in the Maoist's bloody nine-year revolt to oust the monarchy and impose communist rule in the world's only Hindu kingdom.
Wagner, who was a soldier in the German army under Adolf Hitler but said he later deserted in 1943 and fled to Sweden, scoffed at the Maoists' claims they draw their inspiration from Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong's struggle against landowners.
"The Nepalese Maoists are not following Mao Zedong's doctrine as the Chinese Maoists are not involved in killing innocent civilians and looting private properties," Wagner said.
Instead, he said, they were a product of orthodox Nepalese society. "Poverty and social discrimination obliged them to raise arms to achieve their goals," Wagner said.
In the course of his planned 20-day trek to Muktinath, at an altitude of 3,800 metres (12,400 feet), starting this weekend, Wagner said he would also like to encounter a Yeti, a gigantic yet shy humanoid creature fabled to roam the heights of the Himalayas in Nepal.
"Should I come across them, I will express my love to them and try to shake hands," he said. "I don't believe in Yetis but I cannot rule out their existence either."
He said he had run away from the Nazi army because of its treatment of people in general and Jews in particular.
"I felt very disgusted and began hating Nazi soldiers and I successfully fled to Sweden," he said, adding that he had lived in Sweden ever since and had married a Swedish woman, who died two years ago.
Wagner said he first visited Nepal in the 1950s, soon after the country opened up to Westerners.
"There were very few foreign visitors and the Nepalese Himalayas were virtually unknown to many people in Europe, America and other countries," he said, adding that his photographs had helped raise international awareness of Nepal.
Part of the proceeds from sales of his photographs and from photographic exhibitions had been put towards the restoration of the 1,500-year-old Chhairo Gompa or monastery in the Muktinath area, which he planned to visit during his trek, he said.
Trekking, a mainstay of Nepal's tourist industry, has been hard hit since King Gyanendra seized power on February 1 and imposed emergency rule.
Government figures show the number of tourists totalled 14,001 in February, down from 24,456 in the same month a year earlier.
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