A Japanese expedition equipped with infrared cameras will scour the Nepali Himalayas in search of the legendary Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, the team leader said on Monday.

Yoshiteru Takahashi said he had seen footprints on Mount Dhaulagiri during trips to the world's seventh-highest mountain in the 1970s and 1990s which he believed belonged to the Yeti.

"They (the footprints) were very, very close to human footsteps," Takahashi, the 60-year-old who works in a housing firm in Tokyo, told Reuters.

"I'll take pictures and shake hands if I meet him. But we will not capture it...The existence of that creature has to be proved."

Takahashi said his 14-member team would leave on Saturday and spend six weeks on the slopes of the 8,167-meter (26,795-feet) mountain to track down the mythical hairy, ape-like creature believed to live in the snowy caves.

The team comprises seven Japanese climbers and seven Nepali sherpas and will take cameras that can detect body temperature.

The mysterious Yeti seized the world's imagination during a drive by foreign climbers to scale Mount Everest between the 1920s and 1950s, when Sherpa porters recounted local legends about hairy wild men lurking in the mountains.

Many teams have been on Yeti hunts since the 1950s to verify the authenticity of tracks left in the Himalayas. But no conclusive scientific evidence has proved the creature exists.

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