1. Indian Himalayan Garda
from the heart of Siva's stomping grounds, this is January harvested garda which has been cloth twisted - deliciously smooth smoking with a soaring visual high: described to me as the real "bom-bhole-shiv wallah"

2. Kashmiri Garda
pukka sieved hashish from the northernmost area of the Himalaya proper, this is is some soft, smooth-smoking charas with a lovely rounded drunken high

3. Malana and Parvati Charas
handrubbed charas from Himachal Pradesh, India: right and left are two second rub Malana chappatis, bottom is some first rub Malana, top is some black Parvati first rub

you lucky swine

looks delightful

doing my best to be even more annoying - gimme a mo



1. Nepalese "pollen" and Real Nepalese Handrub
the "pollen" on the left is an example of westerners having a negative effect on traditional techniques: strong for an hour with a nasty burnout after-effect, for some reason many backpackers still ask for this stuff, despite its aroma of second-rate ganja; this "pollen"/garda could not be worked into proper hashish for smoking
the real deal is the black charas on the right with a wonderfully fruity strawberry kind of aroma and a great uplifting and trippy high


2. Kumaoni Twists - Indian Handrubbed Charas
just about the most euphoric charas about are the two pieces on the far right - made from special jungli stands, what this jungli/wild charas lacks in refinement (little harsh on the throat) the high makes up for in trumps
the straight piece and twists to the left of it are from farmed plants such as are shown in the Pahari Farmhouse threads - classic soaring high


3. Garhwali Handrub Charas
nice banana aroma - made by a sadhu calling himself Mongiri Baba, not a bad smoke. although the Assamese ganja his friend another baba had made me want to cry it was so strong

1. a great pic of Sheberghan Garda taken by Mriko - this is arguably some of the finest smoke in the world
aromas of juniper, orange essence and cocoa and the most decadent high to go with it


2. Sheberghan Garda and the same garda worked by hand into balls of charas for smoking


3. the opposite end of the spectrum in some ways, this is some very citrusy jungli from a prime spot in the Kullu Valley... express elevator up high with a few downsides such as a little burnout and rawness on the throat - just as strong as Malana though, and supplied in abundance by Mother Nature

Amazing stuff, keep em coming.

Superb stuff namkha, very nice indeed.
When I started smoked cannabis the first ever piece that I brought was a piece of quite high quality Afghanistan or Asian Hashish. Ever since then I have had a soft spot for all good high quality hashish no matter what country its origin. I still enjoy smoking hashish whenever the chance comes along.

H.T.

I want to try them all, but I suspect there is little chance of that happening

namkha,thankyou so much for sharing,prima mate.

A massive for all todays pics!

good gracious....(falls off chair)

Beautiful stuff!, I have had the pleasure of smoking the real I am charas and I can say its the best stuff I have ever smoked!!!, I wouldn' bother with bud if I could get that shit its out of this world

looks delicious

Unreal mate! Thats some if the best Charas pictures I've seen!

If you dont mind me asking, how the hell did you manage to source all of that, are you a backpacker your self or what!?

What about prices, any idea how much you were paying for them in pounds?

"the real deal is the black charas on the right with a wonderfully fruity strawberry kind of aroma and a great uplifting and trippy high"

I'd fucking love to smoke some of that mate! Sounds amazing, I bet that was a pleasure!

Any more to show us mate?

Exotic sub-continent hashish turns someone who is old enough to know better, weak at the knees... what delights!

The beautiful descriptions that accompany such great imagery.. it serves up nostalgia from traveller times long since passed ..and creates almost blind ambitious anticipation.. resurrecting the eternal youthful stoner in me ,who loudly proclaims 'I want to get me some of that!'

What great shots.. thanks for both memories and ambitions. It's good to see such quality find its way into the company of someone who clearly appreciates it. Inspirational stuff!

The "Grail" of Hashish-oh my my-i`m drooling!!!
Thank You.
Aln.

Love those descriptions mate... 'most decadent high' :}

Thanks' for sharing

taffy

That really does take me back to trekking around the Himalaya's, thanks Namkha. Many happy memories come flooding back seeing those lovely pieces of charas and garda. I can remember many happy hours rubbing my own charas and then being surprised that it couldn't be smoked straight away and needed time to 'mature'

Fantastic, absolutely fantastic

Some stunning looking hashes there, thanks for the piccies. I bet there are a few of us drooling over our keyboards

So we having a uk420 trip to india and nepal then?

hey, glad people were enjoying the pics - I'll post more when I have them - here's one more I found... unfortunately I have stacks which are stuck on a packed memory card

Nepalese Jungli from the Kathmandu Valley - 99% certain this was rubbed in July from early flowering wild stands
passable in the flavour department, but not especially strong - the blacker Nepalese handrub above was in a different league

[edit: in retrospect I think this was maybe some adulterated hash]

aaaahhhh the memoriesthat brings back you are indeed a lucky man...

All that hash looks so nice =)

Hi Namkha,

Nice pics!

What's the difference between the "pollen" and the proper garda you show in the next post? How are they made to give such a different final product?

I would love to try to get some of that myself, but how practical is it for a small indoor grow? I presume all buds are used to get enough glands? What sort of weight of dried bud would go into an ounce (28g) of premium garda?

/Me dreams of hand rubbing fields of ganja......



Cheers for any advice,

Z.

very nice hash and pics wow!!

hey Noobybud and others --- I think the best place to get answers to your questions on how much garda/charas can be produced from x amount of bud is Clarke or one of the other hashish books

I'll post some pics of proper Nepalese sieved hashish ("pollen") and handrub charas later --- the pollen above is total garbage, made very hastily from second rate plants --- good pollen from Nepal is a match for the best sieved Afghani these days, not like the kak in the pic above

Handrubbed Nepalese Jungli Charas - from wild "sativas"

Sieved Nepalese Charas ("polle") - from farmed "indicas"

the same piece of sieved charas after being played with

Hey Namkha, are those charas strains unsuitle to smoke as ganja ? i mean, will it only be enought concentrated if its turned into hash ?

I tryed to handrub an american Indica(Cujo) like i saw on a CNN video with clean hands and ended it up with not too much of resin and couldn't remove it from my hands... i guess you need a little dirt to help remove it... Do you intend to make a tutorial on the subject ? Would it not be a good idea to make ice hash from charas strains ?

hey - I have smoked ice hash made in Malana from Malana plants and it was rocket fuel

I think handrubbing just requires practice --- I have watched a Kumaoni guy make about 7g of charas in less than 30 mins and it was very good (from a local jungli strain growing around a chai shop - about 2500m)

a friend has made a video of handrubbing around Chandrakani - we will put it online soon

as for whether or not the charas strains are unsuitable to smoke as ganja --- I think that is a matter of personal choice: some people love smoking Kush and Afghani strains as ganja --- but if you agree with heads like Sam Skunkman and Robert Clarke they will all say that ganja cultivars are the basis of superior bud... so charas and hashish lines can certainly be smoked as weed, and likewise can certainly for the basis of amazing hybrids... but is that the best way to make use of them - well I would say the best thing to do with our charas strains is to grow them outdoors and let them turn in to 1.5kg monsters and then turn that into charas - like I say though, it's all a question of personal tatse and also of how much space you have

When you talk about Afghanis and Kushs you talk about the strains on the market like those Californian and Dutch Kush or the landraces from those places ? I have smoked Bubba Kush and approved... I tryed some Sensi Afghani from a friend's grow and approved.. but is that what you are talking about?

The thing that makes me think twice before choose your seeds is if i'll need a bigger joint to get the results i'm looking for... happy, relaxed, body and head buzz, no anxiety, mellow... That's usually a cigarret from 0.25 to 0.5g of my homegrown... I guess that your charas strains aren't the One Hit Wonder thing, but do YOU think i'll need a bigger cigarette compared to an average good quality weed ? I know In the end I can do some easy ice hash, but i'm not used to smoke any type of hash... and I like the buds better to roll.

Just to make my question more clear: The effects and potency you post for each strain is based on the ganja or on the charas of it ?
I'm a medical user... but i like the buzz too... and i don't think that energetic high, paranoid high or heart starter high is a decent high... i consider this as an unwanted side effect... But the dreamy, the buzz, the mind and body relaxation, "unnoded" thoughts, the sleepy sensation, the happy mellow are the sensation i want... this is what i consider the desired effects. That helps alot with my Mania and Depression episodes... but energetic weed don't do the trick right, only slightly. Just to make clear that I'm not a big fan of those energetic and clear mind high, like what i think sam skunkman was looking for.

WOW

they all look lovely. i would love a smoke of some "real hash".

ooooops, think ive wet myself!!! excuse me whilst i visit the toilet ;o)

peace,

could i just ask pal n sorry if iv missed if ya said but you must be living/workin/whatever in these areas to behold such nuggets of pure joy anh yummliness???

dude fantastic pictures,mouth watering and way impressed..bizz out.

Am loving the topic

Great pictures and your reports make good reading

My fav pic has to be that handful of hashish. Imagine turning up to a session with all of that

Hey - I pull some more nice Nepalese sieved and jungli handrub pics up when I can - and some nice Kullu jungli too

yes pls!! love your pics!! red

Hey - thanks for all the comments

1. Nepalese Jungli - prob. the best jungli I've smoked --- great aroma and flavour, superb intense, energising and trippy high

2. Sieved Nepalese Charas --- veery pukka stuff, worthy challenger to the best Northern Afghani charas as the greatest hashish in the world

3. the same sieved Nepalese after being played with for a bit --- 2007 vintage --- 2008 was an even better year with the heavy rains then baking heat and sun through Oct and Nov

hehehe, namkha u been smoking before posting again

have a look at your Oct 23 post in this thread

anyway, they are mouth watering pics so u can repeat them whenever, as far as im concerned.

love n peace

haaa - duh - thanks for pointing that out mate, wrong pics --- got some different Nep and Jungli pics I meant to put up....

hey Charassy

glad you had a good read

having smoked more charas from Parvati and Malana areas since I wrote that I take back what I said - I would rather smoke well made 1st rub charas (cream) than the rougher later rubs (standard) --- there is some exceptional really well made 1st rub from round there, with a great distinctive taste, and a very strong high... there are distinctive smells and characteristics to Himachali charas... but obviously there is plenty of variation, from valley to valley, farmer to farmer etc. etc. ... the strongest stuff I had was probably some quite amber coloured first rub from round Parvati - spicey fruity up high, with a lot of power, quite a malty toffee like sweetness to it too

there is plenty of mixed soft charas around in India and Nepal, but you are usually only offered it in the cities

making cream style charas is first and foremost about care - removing small leaves and being patient and methodical; harder charas can be made from exactly the same bit of plant by going rougher and more hastily, so you end up with small bits of plant matter fused in with the resins

I have had cream consitency charas made from jungli plants in Uttarakhand (used to be called Uttaranchal) and in Kullu --- and I have also had harder resin made from farmed plants (the Pahari Farmhouse type plant, which can also be used to make cream) --- harder charas tends to be somewhat rougher smoke, just as handrubbed soft resins tend to be less refined than well made sieved; but you can always find exceptions to that -- I have heard of very smooth hard Kashmiri; and smoked veeeery smooth twisted garda from Garhwal

generally good charas changes consistency a lot between low temps, like 12c where it would be pretty solid (again there is some exceptional dry sieve which could still be slightly viscous at this temp) to very pliable and sticky at a temp like 27c

from experience I would know with 99% certain when I saw/smelled/broke open a bit of really exceptional charas without having to smoke it; but there are sometimes bits of well faked and/or reconsitituted charas which might confuse me and vica versa - at the end of the day you can never be 100% certain until you smoke something that it is really top notch

there is certainly plenty of first rate hash to be found in remote bits of Uttarakhand and Nepal - both wild and farmed

usually it would be possible to tell by the texture (visual and tactile) of the charas whether it was made by sieving or handrubbing; it may be there are expert farmers in Parvati who sieve their plants then work the garda into hashish/charas --- but I have never found any that I suspected of having been produced like that -- the texture of the charas showed that it had been made by hand with extreme care - there was even the odd pistil here and there

the highs from all charas between Kashmir and Nepal is very up, euphoric, heady, trippy etc. ... if that is what you want when you are looking for a sativa then I can recommend any strains from that region

from the point of view of a Western grower you can think of them all as sativas

all best,

Namkha

hey - sounds like we are talking about the same type of stuff from round Parvati --- good stuff is always grown high up, I think in any of the secondary and tertiary valleys round there.... also off Kullu and Kangra valleys etc. etc.

as for indica/sativa I think all of the plants round there are Cannabis indica, but then that's a whole nother can of worms ... as for effect: I never smoked anything round there that I found was more than usually sedative... but then I don't subscribe to the whole sativa = up, indica = down thing ... cf. the other thread on here... Panama Red, lots of Thai and Lao stuff have a very heavy stone; some great Afghan and Pakistani hash is very up and so on and so on... the plants round Kullu and Parvati are medium to narrow leaflet I think

it's hard to generalise - I have had great charas from Kullu - at the end of the day I think it depends a lot on which farmer produced it, what seeds he was using etc. ... like you, the best I saw was the amber Parvati stuff found at the opposite end of the valley from Kullu... the right hand pic in the first post in this thread shows a piece of it --- bottom piece, but the colour doesn't show well ... mind you, I have also found the same style in Kullu now I think about it...

hey - charas is not viewed as a very serious crime in Peshawar, but Peshawar is as heavy as anywhere in Afghanistan in terms of security and safety issues --- were it not for that it would be a smoker's paradise... Nepal is certainly worth a look - you can if you are lucky find sieved hashish there which is on a par with the best Afghani; there is also top jungli handrub; and amazing farmed handrub; plus from about Jan onwards there is some good ganja from the Terai and other places; there is also plenty of shit "pollen" and equally shitty weed... the attitude to smoking is reasonably relaxed

so tasty

I've never been afraid to make a total ass of myself by asking the obvious questions...

What's the difference between Charas, Garda and your run-of-the-mill hashish?

Hand rubbed? As in made from hand rubbing the resin off the live plants or rubbed some other way?

I've read there are some problems in the Malana Valley - the people think the rest of us are some kind of sub-humans even though they live like dogs in shit and dirt (strange sense of superiority, to be sure!). I've also heard there are no great strains that originate from the region - most of the genetics being grown come from A-Dam breeders, the local climate and law enforcement policies are favorable for the cultivation.

What's the scoop on all this?

Hashish is the Arabic name for cannabis resin (means "dry stuff/plants"). Charas is the name used in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India etc. and I think I'm right in saying comes from Persian.

Garda ("dust") is a name used in Central Asian areas for unpressed resin glands as produced after sieving. Sieving probably goes back to around the 11th century or so, traditionally using silk. The technique is used in the Hindu Kush, Karakoram, NWFP, Afghanistan and other parts of Central Asia like Tajikistan, plus the Middle East, Northern Africa etc.. Sieving is also used in some parts of Kashmir and Nepal (post-hippy in the latter case at least).

The more ancient technique is hand-rubbing usually of standing live plants. This happens anywhere within the massive area covered by Cannabis which has the gene for producing THC: Yunnan in China, Nepal, Indian Himalaya, Pakistan, the Caucasus, Mongolia. Charas is also produced on a farmed and commercial scale in places like Nepal, Uttarkhand, Himachal and Kashmir by hand-rubbing.

Himachal itself is in an area which has potent wild cannabis (jungli), and a long tradition of cultivated plants which have names varying from area to area (dati, bongi etc.) - both Kashmir to the north and Uttarkhand and Nepal to the west are areas with a deep cannabis culture, and cultivated lines have refined resins for smoking with not just great potency but a fantastic high too --- there are varieties which are very potent and can also be used for seed and fibre; and there are varieties which are more exclusively for seed and fibre which are far less potent; I have seed varieties from Western Nepal with massive seeds which will get you stoned, but have dodgy flavour; I have other lines from Western Nepal with high potency and medium-large seeds, and great flavour; a jungli line I have has some amazing aromas and great potency and tiny seeds - it is wild but is from nearby a Shiva lake, so the question of how much the hand of man has been involved in its production is open... cannabis culture in these regions is strongly associated with Shiva, and goes back beyond the ancient Vedic texts, several thousands years old themselves, into ancient unrecorded history

Malana has some old customs to do with physical contact and entering homes; similar customs exist in many Brahmin communities throughout South Asia, and they are to do with ideas about ritual purity --- to get offended by them is a bit pointless and daft --- there is plenty of mind-blowing stuff going on in Hindu culture, since most outsiders don't really understand them, it's best to avoid passing judgement until you really know what you are looking at

I have heard that some foreigners have brought Dutch and American strains to the region, but the best of all good Parvati, Kullu and Malana charas is distinctively Indian in flavour and effect, and distinctively Himachali too; so are the plants themselves... I haven't seen any evidence of contamination of the genepool by skunk, and all of smokers in the area I met - local Indians, outside Indians, and foreigners - were sure that the local Indian plants were superior to foreign genetics: one thing is for sure the resins and highs they produce are unique and the plants are better adapted to the local environment - they go to around 3m and can produce a good 1.5kg to 2.5kg of dried bud even on nutrient poor soils on mountain tops. The fact that they are happy in the Himalayan environment also means they can easily be adapted to European climates - cf. Cannabis Culture by Patrick Matthews and the various Spanish varieties from people like ACE and Cannabiogen.

Thank you for the detailed answer. I write technical reports for a living so I can appreciate good writing when it hits me in the face. Goodness knows we have more than our share of bums on the board who think illiteracy is somehow hip. Rush Limbaugh often says the most expensive commodity in America is ignorance and I think we have more than enough, but can't seem to trade it away.

Oh, back to the topic.

I couldn't care less about their culture. The odds of me visiting the area are essentially zero. I do quite a bit of traveling for my job, so the idea of going someplace on a holiday has absolutely no appeal for me. Their limitations and inhibitions can remain unmolested by ugly, stupid white people like me.

I looked at your company's offerings. Nothing seems suited to the indoor gardener. What a pity. Any hope on that front?

hi there - yeh in 2009 we will be looking to add strains to our collection which are likely to be better suited to indoors - without the need of hybridising, intensive breeding and/or sadism - in particular squat indicas, and dwarf sativas

at the minute it is possible to use our strains to take short cuts to getting Himalayan and "Indochinese" highs into the indoor growroom - you can take the Afropips route and for example find a good male, and dust it on to cuts of a decent indoor mother plant... I loved his Triple Treat strain which is I think Blueberry x Malawi Gold x Sweet Tooth No. 3, exactly how I'm not sure, but I think using a Malawi male ... it grew well indoors, had great vigour and yields and the Malawi added this lovely kind warm trippy aspect to the high; I'm sure a similar hybrid could be created with plants like the Nepalese or the Highland Thai or the Malana (or any of them!) as a quick way of adding a bit more dimension and character to some of the colder and blander indoor staples

as you imply though, greenhouse and outdoors are the best way to go if you want them to show their full potential

I'll be waiting on that development. Thank you for the information and your time. Namaste!

Another pic of some top notch Nepalese sieved charas from Western Nepal

Looks absoulutly mouth watering! ..lucky guy!

I can't believe that you get anything done..Ever..