25/01/2026
Nepal, November 2025: Searching for Ancient Landraces in the Gandaki Province.
It was a long but beautiful three weeks of wandering through the mountains, scouting for the best representatives of wild cannabis landrace plants of the area. These varieties have been used primarily for charas production in the local valleys for centuries. A few days prior to our arrival, the target areas were buried under heavy snowfall, and we had to wait for the cover to partly melt before we could head deep into the mountains.
Unfortunately, because of this time of year’s atypical weather and a strong snowstorm, most of the wild plants had been covered in snow and had begun to decay. Even so, I was able to secure enough germplasm from a few wild plants found in less exposed patches.
These are pure sativa, semi-tall plants with large and heavy resin production. Some individuals carried slightly dark and purple tones with a very minty and earthy aroma. The freshly rubbed hash from these was probably one of the tastiest and most uplifting charas I have ever tried, though I assume the effect was also amplified by the altitude (between 3,500 and 4,500m).
I collected two accessions in the Manang Valley and one in Mustang, a desert-like area close to the border with Tibet—which seemed to be the most representative wild types for this mountain region.
Now that they are properly dried and cleaned, we are going to test the germination of these seeds and run further genomic analysis to compare them with already cataloged DNA markers. Thanks for all people helping us on this expedition and the gods of mountains to protect us on our journey🙏🏼
