Torn between a widespread tradition and an internationally imposed prohibition, thousands of villages scattered on the Indian Himalayas survive on the production of charas, hashish produced in India.
In India, the use of cannabis dates back to the sacred Vedas texts and has been a part of religious rituals and festivities for millennia.
Cannabis indica, a native strain from which charas is produced, grows wild in many parts of the Himalayas, making it almost impossible for authorities to stem production and track it back to the farmers, who have started to grow their fields ever higher to escape controls. Although widespread, there are no official figures for India’s charas cannabis cultivation as no survey has ever been conducted.
Until the late 1980s, cannabis and opium were legal in India, sold in government-run shops and traded by the British East India Company. To comply with the global War on Drugs, in 1985, India passed the controversial NDPS - narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances - Act, which criminalised cannabis but failed to curb production and trafficking, which has boomed, reflecting increased prices on the international market.
Charas is considered among the best hashish in the world: a gram of resin can cost $20 in the West, although charas producers win only tiny margins.
They live a humble life, far away from modernity, in extreme conditions and with no alternative livelihoods. They consider cannabis a gift from God.
Despite a change of course internationally, the debate on legalisation in India is still at an embryonic stage.
Nearly 400 of India's 640 districts have had cannabis cultivation, according to Romesh Bhattacharji, a former Narcotics Commissioner of India. Since 1985, cannabis use and cultivation has proliferated.
Two men carry freshly cut cannabis bundles from high altitude fields, some hours' walk from their home. Villages lying at 10,000ft are a long walk from the nearest drivable road.
A 'field house' near a cannabis plantation. Farmers have been forced to use fields higher up in the mountains since the police raids that followed the passing of the NDPS Act.
Elders in traditional, hand-spun woollen suits sit in the village square near the temple. They are believed to be the first generation to start cultivating and harvesting the cannabis flowers, encouraged by Western hippies in the 1970s.
Strips of fire burn the mountainside near to the village. More land is being used to grow the extremely profitable cannabis crop, though monoculture and deforestation are steadily destroying the soil.
Charas, unlike other types of hashish, is produced by rubbing the plant while it is still alive and collecting the resin from the hands. Hippies and sadhus, Hindu holy men, helped the locals to improve the technique.
Children play in the school yard. Only primary education is provided in the village, which has no doctor or market. Only a few small shops provide basic grocery needs.
Children with bows fire arrows made out of cannabis stalk, the scraps of their parents' work. Children often hang around the fields the crop is being harvested.
An icon of Shiva, the most revered god in the valley. Villagers are mainly Hindus, although other minor deities, known as devta, are worshipped in the mountains.
A woman bathes her grandson in the tandoori room, which houses the wooden stove. There is no tap water or sewage system in the villages, which can be only be reached on foot along steep paths.
People gather in the village square on the occasion of a mela, or festival. These are occasions for people from different villages to socialise and arrange marriages. Villages are quite a small holding between 200 and 800 people.
In India, the use of cannabis dates back to the sacred Vedas texts and has been a part of religious rituals and festivities for millennia.
Cannabis indica, a native strain from which charas is produced, grows wild in many parts of the Himalayas, making it almost impossible for authorities to stem production and track it back to the farmers, who have started to grow their fields ever higher to escape controls. Although widespread, there are no official figures for India’s charas cannabis cultivation as no survey has ever been conducted.
Until the late 1980s, cannabis and opium were legal in India, sold in government-run shops and traded by the British East India Company. To comply with the global War on Drugs, in 1985, India passed the controversial NDPS - narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances - Act, which criminalised cannabis but failed to curb production and trafficking, which has boomed, reflecting increased prices on the international market.
Charas is considered among the best hashish in the world: a gram of resin can cost $20 in the West, although charas producers win only tiny margins.
They live a humble life, far away from modernity, in extreme conditions and with no alternative livelihoods. They consider cannabis a gift from God.
Despite a change of course internationally, the debate on legalisation in India is still at an embryonic stage.
Nearly 400 of India's 640 districts have had cannabis cultivation, according to Romesh Bhattacharji, a former Narcotics Commissioner of India. Since 1985, cannabis use and cultivation has proliferated.
Two men carry freshly cut cannabis bundles from high altitude fields, some hours' walk from their home. Villages lying at 10,000ft are a long walk from the nearest drivable road.
A 'field house' near a cannabis plantation. Farmers have been forced to use fields higher up in the mountains since the police raids that followed the passing of the NDPS Act.
Elders in traditional, hand-spun woollen suits sit in the village square near the temple. They are believed to be the first generation to start cultivating and harvesting the cannabis flowers, encouraged by Western hippies in the 1970s.
Strips of fire burn the mountainside near to the village. More land is being used to grow the extremely profitable cannabis crop, though monoculture and deforestation are steadily destroying the soil.
Charas, unlike other types of hashish, is produced by rubbing the plant while it is still alive and collecting the resin from the hands. Hippies and sadhus, Hindu holy men, helped the locals to improve the technique.
Children play in the school yard. Only primary education is provided in the village, which has no doctor or market. Only a few small shops provide basic grocery needs.
Children with bows fire arrows made out of cannabis stalk, the scraps of their parents' work. Children often hang around the fields the crop is being harvested.
An icon of Shiva, the most revered god in the valley. Villagers are mainly Hindus, although other minor deities, known as devta, are worshipped in the mountains.
A woman bathes her grandson in the tandoori room, which houses the wooden stove. There is no tap water or sewage system in the villages, which can be only be reached on foot along steep paths.
People gather in the village square on the occasion of a mela, or festival. These are occasions for people from different villages to socialise and arrange marriages. Villages are quite a small holding between 200 and 800 people.