Det finnes mange interessant reise-tråder på nettet fra Nepal, mange bare på ICMag-forumet. Men en jeg selv har lest en del i er denne fra ICMag,
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=165244
Her finner du mange bilder av forskjellige typer hasj fra Nepal, det være tørrsiktet, håndrullet, you name it.
Og her er litt uttak fra boka Hashish av Robert C. Clarke:
Nepal
Nepal, with a long tradition of harvesting Cannabis resin by hand-rubbing, is internationally the best known source of hand-rubbed hashish. In Nepal, both the living Cannabis plant and dried marijuana flowers are called ganja. Hashish usually is called charas. (The term charas usually refers only to hand-rubbed hashish, by far the most common type of hashish found in Nepal.) Fresh hand-rubbed charas is acclaimed as the best quality for smoking; sieved hashish is considered inferior.
Nepali charas always had a good reputation and was considered by hashish connoisseurs in British India during the 1800s to be of the highest quality (IHDCR 1893-94). Johnston (1855) described the unique characteristics of fine Nepali hashish:
In Nepal, it is gathered by the hand in the same way as opium. This variety is very pure, and much prized. It is called momeea, or waxen churrus (charas). It remains soft, even after continued drying; has a fragrant narcotic odor, which becomes strong and aromatic on heating. Its taste is slightly hot, bitterish, and acrid, yet balsamic.
Hooper (1908) also described momeea and another lower grade of hashish called shahjehani:
Momeea, black, wax-like cakes, valued at Rs. 10 per seer, and shahjehani, sticks contain-ing portions of leaf, valued at Rs. 3 per seer, are the two kinds of Nepal charas.
Through the seven-teenth century, the small quantities of high-quality charas produced in the Himalayan region were only for local consumption. As the demand across India increased during the eighteenth century, charas production in Nepal also increased. Nepalese production apparently did not expand sufficiently to fill the demand because the source of charas was wild Cannabis and only a limited amount could be produced. To make large commercial quantities of hashish, cultivation was necessary. The IHDCR reported that most of the fine charas smoked in India during the nineteenth century was sieved hashish from Central Asia. Nepali charas, considered of higher purity and potency than Turkestani hashish, commanded a higher price in India. Nepali charas has maintained its popularity throughout the twentieth century. Aldrich (1979) states:
Hand-rubbed charas from Nepal became the choicest of goodies in India during World War II. When it was unavailable, the hash[ish] lovers of India started making their own. The modern hashish shops in Katmandu arose with the influx of counter culture Westerners in the late 1960s. Nepal banned the shops and charas export in 1973, but this upset the economy so much that the government recently reversed its position, rejecting a crop-substitution scheme as unfeasible.
Fingers and
temple balls were the two most common shapes of Nepali hashish exported to Europe and North America in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Temple balls were spherical or egg-shaped, solid, very dark brown, and polished. Procurers of temple balls were often treated to the tale of their long history as religious sacraments, one of the few essentially true hippie folktales. Nepali Buddhists revere Cannabis as a sacramental herb of great significance, and hashish figures centrally in their rituals (Behr pers. comm. 1987).
Fingers varied in diameter, from that of a pencil to that of an adult's finger. All were about 8 to 15 cm in length. Usually, 6 to 20 soft, fresh fingers were pressed into elliptical bundles. Bundles usually were smoothed on the outside by hand and often appeared shiny.
Fingers and
temple balls were dark brown to almost black on the outside. Only occasionally were they still fresh when they reached European and North American markets. If fresh, the balls felt dense and resilient when squeezed. The inside of a fresh piece of traditional, high-quality Nepali charas was soft, like stiff nougat, and brown rather than hard and black; it always smelled earthy and sweet when fresh. As a piece aged, especially if the resin contained moisture, it shrank slightly and small cracks developed in the surface, which promoted further drying and spoiling of the piece.
With too much residual water in a piece of hashish, fungal contaminants flourish, causing spoilage.
Nepali hand-rubbed hashish rarely is pressed sufficiently before being stored. Almost always, too much moisture is left and the hashish usually spoils as it dries. (Always enjoy hand-rubbed hashish soon after it is produced.) Some commercial pieces of Nepali hashish are made very crudely with pieces of leaf and seeds occasionally found in the pieces.
Water ruins otherwise great hashish. Experienced hashish-rubbers wait for the dew to dissipate so that the plants are completely dry before resin collection begins. Only inexperienced and hasty hashish-rubbers collect from wet plants. Cherniak (1979) claims:
The resin must be moistened or sprinkled with water before it can be scraped off easily from the palms with a knife. After being sprinkled with water, the resin may be rubbed off by abrasively rubbing the open palms against one another.
If this was indeed common practice when removing resin from the palms, then it would explain why such a high percentage of Nepali hashish spoiled during shipment. Water does not belong in a piece of hashish. The hands ought never be wetted during resin collection.
Spoiled Hashish
Smoking hashish that is infected with mold can make you sick. Hand-rubbed hashish is particularly prone to spoilage. More often than not, you can find streaks of white mold inside a spoiled piece of Nepali charas. In the United States, dealers often claimed that the white streaks were opium, an explanation that was merely marketing-hype. The white streaks indicated contamination by potentially toxic fungi. Eating hashish without heating is unsanitary. Hashish might contain many disease-producing organisms, especially in spoiled, hand-rubbed pieces.
The most skilled hashish harvesters can rub 5 to 10 g per day of the highest quality charas or 50 g per day of good commercial-grade momeea hashish. For the finest pieces, only the best plants are used. Plants are rubbed after the dew has lifted and rubbing is done lightly. Plant debris are carefully picked out before the hashish is pressed.
When such care is taken, a yield of 5 to 10 g per day is considered good, but harvesters rubbing indiscriminately collect up to 200 g per day of lowest-quality resin, permeated with bits of leaf (shahjehani) and barely qualifying as hashish.
Hand-rubbed Nepali hashish is still available occasionally in Amsterdam and elsewhere in Europe. Most of it is too dry and harsh smoking, but the rare, fresh pieces can be excellent. Both wild and cultivated Cannabis are used to make hashish in Nepal. For rubbed hashish, ganja is cultivated in small gardens as a cash crop in the low hills near Katmandu during the dry, winter season from December to March. During, the summer season, wild Cannabis florishes at higher altitudes and is rubbed for hashish in autumn (Manandahar pers. comm. 1986).
Westerners made sieved (not the indigenous hand-rubbed) hashish in Nepal from spontaneously growing Cannabis as early as 1978. The process of harvesting and drying the plants and separating the resin powder by sieving came from Afghanistan and the Middle East with travelers of the Hippie Hashish Trail.
Since 1985, sieved Nepali hashish made by Westerners from cultivated plants has been available from time to time in Amsterdam coffee shops. This hashish was a deep rich brown, very soft and oily but not sticky, and came in blocks 2 to 3 cm thick. This sieved Nepali hashish was reported to be very strong but seemed to induce a shallow, two-dimensional high. It was made by mixing "farmers" resin powder with up to 20 percent hashish oil.
har stor tro på at dette er julebønna
