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Collecting Yarshagumba
By KTM Metro Reporter
June 5, 2010: Nepalese highlanders go to collect Yarshagumba: sex-stimulant herb in the Nepalese mountains starting in mid-May and ending in mid-August every year. People believe that it increases sexual impotency; so, they call it a Himalayan herbal viagra. This year too, many Nepalis from Baglung, Rukum, Rolpa, Dolpa, Solukhumbu, and Taplejung have gone to the high altitude areas to collect Yarshagumba.
The local area conservation committee collects entrance fee of Rs 2,000 (about US $30) per person from the people going to collect Yarshagumba. Then, the collectors keep the Yarshagumba they have collected and sell it in the local market. It fetches high prices to the collectors. So, even schools are closed for making them able to accompany their parents to collect Yarshagumba.
Yarshagumba is a Tibetan word, and it literally means summer plant and winter insect. Yarshagumba is a rare fungus that grows on the heads of caterpillars that remain under soil during the winter in the field at above 3,500 meters (11,483 feet) of the Himalayan region of Nepal. Spores of the fungus settle on the heads of caterpillars and get into the bodies and grow out as Yarshagumba killing the insects.
