HUNT FOR HIMALAYAN VIAGRA

The dangerous harvesting of a rare insect-herb is a quiet side-hustle in a charming hamlet of Uttarakhand

- SNEHA BHURA

Prerna Devi and her husband, Jagat Singh Ganghari, fall on their knees and bend over on the floor.

Prerna is 52 or thereabouts, Jagat 65. On a crisp November afternoon in Munsiyari-a quiet hamlet at 7,200ft in Uttarakhand's Pithoragarh district-they are demonstrating how they burrow for the tip of a rare fungus in snow-peaked mountains.

In Munsiyari, often charmingly referred to as Little Kashmir, local residents often point to the five famous peaks, namely Panchachuli, girding the Kumaon region far into the horizon, as if the peaks are the source of all sustenance in this quaint little hill town perched between the borders of India, Tibet and Nepal.

Standing outside her spacious, pucca house on a broken road, Prerna looks petite and rough-hewn.

She chirpily talks about walking over the remnants of a glacier from the Nanda Devi east base camp to search for keeda jadi or cordyceps-a mummified caterpillar fungus with a slender, brown body whose benefits were perhaps first described in An Ocean of Aphrodisiacal Qualities, a 15th century Tibetan medicinal text.

It is known as Yartsa Gunbu in Nepal and Tibet, a poetic name meaning summer grass, winter worm. The mushroom is renowned as Himalayan Viagra’ for its rumoured use as a sexual stimulant. But Prerna is least concerned with such saucy connotations. For her family of three in Munsiyari, keeda jadi is the most important source of income ina region mostly amenable to growing potato, rajma and medicinal herbs.