Fresh Yak Blood Drinking Festival In Nepal

Fresh Yak Blood Drinking Festival In Nepal

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

Every year the yak farmers hold the bizarre fresh-yak-blood-drinking festival, blood drawn from live yaks at various villages such as Kobang, Thasang, Marchay, Gharpajhang, and Yak-kharka in the Mustang district three times a year in turn in Baishak (April/May) and in Srawon (July/August) before moving the yaks to the high mountain areas for grazing. Some villages hold this festival in Baishak, others in Srawon. Traditionally, fresh-blood drinking had been free for all. Currently, it has been more like profitable business. The festival makes some people well off others healthy, as the fresh live yak blood has the healing power folks believe in.

Yak is a bull; Nak is a cow. They are the crossbreds of the mountain and local regular cows. They are hairy and adapted to the high altitude cold climate in Nepal. Sometimes, they are used for carrying goods. Common folks outside of the Mustang area call both yak and Nak as yaks. They had been the part of the lives of the mountainous folks that have the harsh life in the rugged mountains where other businesses except for raising yak and sheep have been hard to run.

Farmers raise yaks for both meat and milk and milk products. Yak cheese is very popular among the foreign visitors and the local folks. Traditionally, yak farmers made “churpi” out of the yak milk. They do so even today because selling milk has been next to impossible because of the non-access to the market. “Churpi” is good for chewing; it is made tough to chew. Yak meat is one of the main food items for the folks at the high mountain.

The fresh yak blood drinking festival runs in Kobang for two weeks. About five thousand visitors are anticipated to drink the fresh yak blood drawn from live yaks at the currently ongoing festival in Kobang of the Mustang district, the management committee of the festival stated. They have already shifted down 700 yaks from the high mountains to Kobang for the festival.

A small hole is made at the vein running through the neck of a yak to draw the blood, as the farmers have to take out some blood out of the adult yaks every year otherwise they would be uncontrollable; they even go wild and even cause harm to the owners. Taking about 15 glasses of fresh blood from an adult yak keeps it cool throughout a year.

A glass of fresh yak blood is priced at NPR 200. Previously, the local folks got it gratis. Conventionally, folks drank fresh milk directly from the vein of a live-standing yak as much as any folk could like and could digest. Now, the fresh blood is drawn from a yak into a glass and is served to a customer at NPR 200 per glass.

Thus, the yak blood drinking festival has been commercialized. The traditional yak blood drinking festival usually ran for drawing blood from adult yaks, and for providing drinkers with free blood has been a commercial one. Yak farmers and local businesspeople have been making millions out of the festival either selling the fresh yak blood or providing foods and lodgings to the visitors.

Farmers have taken about 700 adult yaks from the high mountains down to the festival area for the festival. A farmer keeps from 50 to 100 yaks. Farmers together are going to make more than NPR 2 million out of the fresh yak blood they serve to the customers during the festival period. This amount of money and other money local folks make out of providing the visitors with accommodations and foods will improve the rural economy, and make the lives of rural folks as easy as possible.

Folks believe that the fresh yak blood has the healing power. It works as medicine and heals the sick folks suffering from gastric, diabetes, asthma and even heart disease. However, no authentic survey or research on this subject matter has been done so far to prove or disprove such claims. However, folks have faith in this popular belief because probably some of the folks must have really recovered from sickness.

Yaks graze the herbs and grasses with medicinal power on high mountains where many famous medicinal herbs including the high value yarsa-gumba grow. Probably, yaks eating those medicinal herbs and grasses must have held in their blood some constituent medicine of the herbs that must have the capacity of curing of the common diseases, and that make yaks so strong that they would go wild and hurt everybody if 15 pints of blood is not drawn from their bodies every year. So, farmers have to draw the fresh blood from their yaks to keep them sober. Thus, must have come the tradition of drinking fresh blood from live yaks.

The high Nepalese mountains are the host of many famous therapeutic herbs. One of them is yarsa-gumba. A single kilo of yarsa-gumba fetches hundreds of thousands of rupees at the Chinese and Japanese market. Rich Chinese and Japanese folks eat yarsa-gumba in a soup. It improves their physical stamina and even brings back their lost sex life to those rich folks that could pay such exorbitantly high prices and that must have believed in it.

For two months in summer, all schools are closed in those areas for making teachers, students and parents possible to go to the mountains and collect yarsa-gumba. They carry all foods and drinks required for a few weeks, and tents to stay on in those areas. They are fortune-seekers. Some pickers actually make a fortune; others might not be so fortunate for the reasons beyond their control.

Making a fortune from picking up yarsa-gumba has not been without high risk, too. Some yarsa-gumba pickers fall from cliffs, others die from cold when unexpected climate change cause snowfalls and their tents fail to keep them warm enough to survive at the high altitude cold. Some of them lost the high value herbs so efortfully earned to the robbers on the way to the market.

For the period of the fresh yak blood drinking festival, tent restaurants come up, local folks make their houses as lodges, traders and businesspersons come from far away to sell their products and serve the festival revelers with foods and drinks to make them as comfortable as possible and the festival as enjoyable as possible. Drink and dance parties go on for the full nights of the period of the festival. Revelers enjoy drinking fresh yak blood from live yaks, and then local or imported alcohol drinks at night.

Probably, one of the main aspects of the festival might be the fueling of the local economy. Folks make money serving the revelers. Local folks make money from the accommodation they provide the visitors that come from different areas for watching the festival or for enjoying the drinking of the fresh yak blood. Yak farmers make money from selling the fresh yak blood. Yak blood drinkers probably get cured of their diseases; that also is the economic benefit. Farmers reduce the energy and strength of yaks drawing 15 glasses of blood from yaks, so that they would be manageable.

The fresh yak blood drinking festival must serve the main purpose of the yak farmers to draw the blood from the yaks so that their yaks would not grow to be wild because of the energy they get grazing on the medicinal herbs on the high mountains. Farmers make money out of it. Probably, the fresh yak blood drinkers for the medical purposes must have cured of their diseases; those folks drinking yak blood for fun might be energized from the yak blood supposedly containing the elements of medicinal herbs probably not to the extent of yaks that have not been weaned off 15 glasses of blood. Surely, many local folks and outsiders, too make money out of the festival.

The main source of information is the news titled “Chauri ko ragat piunay mela” published in the “artha bazaar” supplement to “gorkhapatra” published on April 20, 2018.

April 21, 2018