A rare fungus some are calling Indian Viagra is starting to transform local economies in the Himalayas. But some of those harvesting it are now having to arm themselves to protect what has become a valuable cash crop.

There is a fungus that attacks caterpillars in the Indian Himalayas. People in north India call it kira jari. In neighbouring Tibet it is known as yarsagumba.

The fungus mummifies its prey and then grows out of the top of the dead caterpillar's head. It appears above ground just as the snow melts in May or June.

In China, kira jari is used as an aphrodisiac. Athletes have used it as a performance-enhancing drug. For villagers in the Indian Himalayas it is a source of income.

During the last five years they have begun to collect the caterpillar fungus and sell it to local traders. These middlemen, in turn, sell the fungi to businesspeople in Delhi and it travels on from there to Nepal and China. 
I am confused here. Are Indians selling it to Nepal or Nepal selling it to other countries? I saw this news in the main headline news with picture. It looks like they are in rush to publish the news. lol Medias

When sold in the village, a single fungus fetches 150 Indian rupees (about £2 or $3) - more than the daily wage of a manual labourer.

Some people are able to collect 40 in a single day. So the search for caterpillar fungus has come to resemble a type of Himalayan gold rush.

I have spent the past few months in the Indian Himalayas doing research on youth and social change. I lived in the village of Bemni, located at about 10,000 feet (3,000m) near the Indian border with Tibet.

Much of our time was spent trying to understand the changing economy of the village, and kira jari featured heavily in our interviews.

Take Prem Singh, a 24-year-old man in the village known for his restless energy and appetite for hard work.

Prem spent the first two weeks of May in high altitude snowfields collecting kira jari. He went on his own, carrying rice, wheat and daal on his back, camping in a cave on the way, and eventually pitching camp 5,000 metres up. He found nothing during the first three days.

But then his luck changed. He returned to Bemni with 200 fungi stuffed into old sweet jars. He is using his earnings to construct a new house, an impressive two-storey structure built out of local stone.

Kira jari, and the money it earns, is big news for Bemni. Young men have generally been looking outside the village for opportunities to make money in cities down in the plains. They have worked in hotels, in the army, and in some of the new service industries emerging in urban India.

Kira jari is reversing this process somewhat. Since 2007, when villagers learnt about the fungus, vast numbers now head not to the big cities but to the high altitude meadows.

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People joke that the meadows - formerly the preserve of intrepid goatherds - have become small towns of tents, stoves, and clothes' lines. As Prem told us, "Why would I migrate to Delhi to work in a hotel when I can earn in two weeks what I'd make in Delhi in two years?"

But there is a dark side to fungus collection, too.

Some villagers return with nothing to show for their weeks in high altitude snow fields. Many fall ill. Searching for the fungus involves lying on your front, elbows dug into the scree and snow, scouring the ground in front of you for nothing larger than the stalk of an apple. It is freezing cold, there is a howling wind, and your lungs ache.

People often return to the village with snow-blindness, painful joints, and problems breathing. One person died recently as a result of the altitude. Another man fell into an ice crevasse and was only rescued by villagers 13 days later - he had lived on drips from the glacier. (Apparently he is back collecting kira jari this year).

The fungus business is also generating rivalries. There are two villages that are at loggerheads over access to a high-altitude meadow where kira jari is especially abundant. They have to carry guns on their trips for the fungus.

There are other risks, too. It is legal to collect the fungus but not legal to sell it.

Two years ago, a confidence trickster arrived in Bemni and promised people he could get a very good price for their crop. He disappeared with people's fungi and has never returned. Because kira jari is part of the black market, the villagers could not complain.

Last year young men from the village tried to sell their fungi in a local town. Someone in the village tipped off the local police who intercepted the young men on the road and seized the entire fungus crop.

Imagine the heartbreak as they trooped back to the village. The men had nothing to show for weeks in the bitter cold, while the police no doubt profited from their booty.

But people seem to take these risks in their stride. As Prem said to us, "You have got your risky work and your safe work. Kira jari is the risk, local manual labour is the safe option."

For the time being, India's home-grown version of Viagra has become a decent gamble.

And no, I haven't tried it.

Dolpa, Nepal (CNN) -- Ram Bahadur Jafra and his two brothers crouch on a field, picking through blades of grass and staring at the soil. They have traveled five days by foot to a Himalayan meadow at a 4,300 meter elevation deep inside Nepal's Dolpa district. They came, as tens of thousands do each year, to harvest a highly valuable commodity from the high-altitude soil: the Himalayan caterpillar fungus -- also known as Himalayan Viagra.

Caterpillar fungus, or as it's called in Tibetan, "yartsa gunbu," meaning "summer grass, winter worm," is a specimen created when a parasitic fungus infects caterpillars underground which, were they not forestalled by the fungus, would produce ghost moths.

After the fungus mummifies the caterpillar underground, it thrusts out of the soil. It's this tiny protuberance that the harvesters spend weeks each spring searching for.

A hundred or so people crawl across the field in a mulled silence until a sole searcher lets out an excited cry. Dozens rush over to witness, Jafra is the first to arrive.

The woman who has discovered the specimen uses an ice pick to prod the earth and dig a hole about six inches in diameter. She then lifts a clump of earth up and sifts out the specimen. The crowd gossips about its value -- "it's small, only 300 rupees!" (about $3). A middle man will offer her that amount, then walk it to a market in Tibet and sell it for three times the price.

Jafra explains: "We pay attention when other people find them. This is our first time coming for the harvest. We've been here for nearly a week. We haven't found anything, because we don't know what they look like -- we don't know what we're looking for."

Like many others, Ram and his brothers traveled for the harvest betting on hope alone. "People in our village talked about the money to be earned, so we came," he says.

The rumors of riches are not baseless. According to experts, the market value of yartsa gunbu has increased by 900% between 1997 and 2008.

 

 

Searching for 'Himalayan Viagra'

One study says 500 grams of top quality yartsa gunbu can sell for up to $13,000 in Lhasa, Tibet, or up to $26,000 in Shanghai. Average annual income in Nepal's rural mid-and-far-western hills, where many harvesters live, is just $283, according to the government.

Police in Dolpa expect 40,000 people to migrate to the district this year. The influx of migrant harvesters speaks volumes to the increasing global commodification of yartsa gunbu. Prized in traditional Tibetan and Chinese medicinal practices for its power as an elixir or an aphrodisiac, in recent years commercial dubbing of the product as "Himalayan Viagra" has driven up both demand and market value around the world.

But the unprecedented flood of harvesters has observers concerned about the environmental impacts of this informal economic boom.

"Look at the hills," says Gyalpo Thandin, a student in Dolpa, "they're all torn up from people digging. By next year they'll be deserts."

Thandin, who was visiting home for the harvest, remembers when the yartsa gunbu season meant local bounty, not commercial competition. "Just five years ago the numbers were lower," he says. "Every year we see more people come and more grasslands get damaged. People who come hack at the land with tools and leave it to dry out."

He says his family's yaks have died in recent winters due to depleted grass caused by the harvest.

Environmental protection measures offer some hope. Six years ago, a committee of community leaders in Dolpa instituted a taxation system on harvesters in an effort to control numbers and ensure the local community remained resilient amidst environmental changes.

The committee charges locals 1,000 rupees ($11) and outsiders 3,000 rupees ($33) to join the harvest. The system is intended to spend the money on environmental protection measures and to subsidize food for villages in the district.

Similar systems exist in harvest areas across the Himalayas. However, some worry the measure is ineffective.

A former committee member who spoke on the condition of anonymity suggests that charging admission to the harvest has only made it seem even more valuable, and as a result, drawn more harvesters. "The goal of the system was to charge people and therefore limit the number who would want to come for the harvest, but putting a price on the entry might actually be encouraging more people," he says.

A leading expert on Himalayan caterpillar fungus, ecologist and geographer Daniel Winkler, believes the future of the harvests is contingent on many factors -- collection intensity, rainfall, and climate change among them.

"Centuries of collection indicate that caterpillar fungus is a relatively resilient resource," he says.

But his research suggests that over-harvesting is contributing to fewer fungal spores being around for the next season. Winkler believes education is the key element to promoting sustainable resource conservation.

"Knowledge of fungal reproduction ... and (establishing) an end-date to the collection season might allow for sufficient spore dispersal to guarantee sustainability," he adds.

As communities in Nepal, one of the world's poorest countries, cope with the economic need and the increasing desire for high-value commodities like yartsa gunbu, conservation efforts will require cooperation between leaders at village, district, and national levels. There is no question this Himalayan "gold rush" buoys rural economies. Keeping it around for future generations will be the challenge.

Some of the Indian cunningness 

1.  Buddha was born in India( when Nepali rightfully claimed that Buddha was born in Nepal then they started to say Buddhism was born in India and pretend as if they are the heir of Buddha .
2. Jesus Christ spent most of his teen age in India learning from Indian scholars.. Some even claim that Jesus Christ died in Kashmir. They even point out a place in Kashmir where Jesus Christ was buried.

3. When western countries discover something they say  "Indians have discovered that long time ago" and as a evidence point out to the mythological stories of "Mahabharata" and Ramayana"

4. Lately Scientist discovered "Gods Particle" look what Indians are saying about it

भारत में 'गॉड 2' की खोज में जुटे हैं वैज्ञानिक

9 Jul 2012, 1635 hrs IST,सांध्य टाइम्स