Karma Pun, in his early twenties, succumbed to the allure of this caterpillar fungus this year. A resident of Bhuibang, Rukum district Pun had been a regular yarsa hunter for some years now. This experience might be the reason that he must have considered himself one who had mastered the thin and cold Himalayan air. Three months back he had climbed up the meadows in the Maikot area of Rukum for picking the herb - with the passing days he was seduced to climb in higher mountains by this lucrative herb and became victim to altitude sickness and frost bites.During the last season, Pun had been able to fetch 50,000 rupees from his yarsagumba collection trip. The income was sufficient for his family to fulfill all their needs. This is one of the major attraction to which locals are attracted to and make this life-threatening journey every year. After falling seriously ill and unable to breath, Pun was helped by his villagers to return home, where he breathed his last after suffering for two more days.
"He succumbed to excessive cold in mountainous areas," Kul Bahadur Thapa, a police constable at the Ranma Maikot Police Station informed adding that the locals make risky journey every year for the drug and some of them loose their lives in their efforts to earn a living for their families.
Pun was lucky in the sense that he was carried back home by his team members, some yarsa pickers even die anonymously too in this meadows. Due to fear that others will loot away their pick, some yarsa pickers go into these dangerous Himalayan meadows alone but never return. In the same meadows where Pun became victim to cold and altitude sickness, some pickers had found a dead body of an unidentified man. This men who the locals guessed might have been in his fifties, was found dead in one of the meadows in the upper range of the mountain, informed Thapa while stating they are yet to verify his identity.
The fetch is good for this herb in the local and the black market and this is the reason every year hundreds of local walk up into the tundra region risking their lives. While some never return to cherish the fetch of their collection, some return with illness and some even loose their limbs in accidents. Some of the Pun's team members had to return home almost empty handed after they felt seriously ill following failure to acclimatize themselves to the hard cold weather. Some had to return home from the middle of their journey after they felt ill, while some were stranded on the way itself as they could not return on their own and had to wait for help from home, Thapa said.
Khiri Pun, a Maikot resident, had fallen victim to altitude sickness and extreme cold in the meadows. He was fast loosing strength to fight against the severely coldness. Pun was lucky that his friends noticed that he would not survive the weather longer and was carried back home. If they had not took the decision and carried him back home, he would also have lost his life. Now at home and fully recovered from the sickness, he says
"I feel lucky that I was brought back home by my friends. I would not have survived without them," adding that during his sickness and the hardships that he and his friends had to go in carrying him back to home made him "realize that life is more valuable than money."
Severe cold and altitude sickness are major causes to which many yarsa pickers loose their life. With the rise in altitude coldness increases and oxygen becomes thin -making it harder for some to breath. Frost bites become more common in the higher altitude mountain region. As most of the yarsa pickers are from the lower altitude settlements and villages, all of them don't easily acclimatize themselves to the higher altitude tundra climatic conditions.
While informing that this year there have been two deaths, including Karma, in the meadows, police constable Thapa informed that two pickers had died there last year as well. Locals know this very well - but still the promise of an earning that could, if lucky enough, fetch them price that can provide for their family's whole year expense, allures them up into the lap of the mountains and for some away from their families, forever.
Its not only nature that turns cruel to yarsa collectors, human hostility is another continuous threat to them - in the meadows, on their way home and on their way to the merchant to sell it. Security is one of the greatest problems faced by yarsa collectors during the collection season. While collectors work hard through the harsh climate to earn a living for their families, some take on the forms of predators for looting the collectors. Harka Bahadur Lama of Barhabisse, Sindhupalchowk lost his life when a gang of four gunned him down using a modern weapon like the M -16 automatic gun, DSP Gobinda Thapaliya of District Police Office, Rukum informed. One of the four members of this gang was recently arrested, while the three others of the gang are still out of police net, Thapaliya informed.
Considering this fatality, DPO Rukum has taken extra measures to ensure security to the yarsa pickers and traders. As part of this strategy, it has deputed 16 police personnel from the nearby police post in yarsa harvest areas of Pupal, Arbija and Purbang VDCs.
A piece of yarsagumba sells for around Rs 500-1,000 and a kilo of it fetches around Rs 1.8 million in the local market and if sold in Kathmandu or in Tibet, the price ranges between Rs 2.5 to 3.5 million for a kilo. This is the reason that yarsa collectors from Humla, Jumla, Bajura, Achham, Bajhang, Jajarkot, Surkhet and Dailekh district annually trek to the Mugu highlands to collect the prized caterpillar fungus.
While this herb has brought a new hope to this otherwise famished Himalayan region, where most of the people are below the poverty line and have minimum resources to live on, it has also made their lives more vulnerable to life-threats from nature and gangsters.
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