It is called as Himalayan Viagara. Local kids hunt for this and make a living. To locals, the hunt is well worth it. Just one kilo of yarsagumba can get up to one lakh dollars.
In rural Nepal, where there is unemployment the majority of families living at high altitudes as well as those in neighbouring regions earn their living by collecting this herb, making it by far the most valuable commodity with them.
But why is it so lucrative? yarsagumba is also known as “Himalayan Viagra” due to the aphrodisiac medley of caterpillar and fungus.
Chinese medicine now says that yarsagumba or Himalayan Viagra can cure impotence, increase libido, and resolve joint pains, as well as treat cancer and obesity.
It is believed that cattlemen first discovered the pharmacological benefits of the caterpillar-fungus more than a thousand years ago after noticing their yaks becoming energised from feeding on the herb.
Starting in the 1960s, people have been making tea and soups out of this mythological little plant-animal, and stuffing the belly of a duck with yarsagumba herbs before roasting.
This magic fungus was widely popularised in the 1990s, when a Chinese runner who ate it broke two world records it is reported. Since then, research on the caterpillar-fungus has intensified.
The main chemicals of this natural Cordyceps’s 28 saturated and unsaturated fatty acids are palmitic acid, linoleic acid, oleic acid, stearic acid, and ergo sterol. It also includes vitamins and inorganic elements.
At the beginning of the Himalayan summer, when the snows start to melt, all the schools close for the season and Nepali parents and children move to the grasslands with enough food for a month-long journey on a quest for a herb more valuable than gold.
To find yarasagumba families crawl through muddy fields hoping to spot a yellowish-green mummified caterpillar that resembles a disproportionate unicorn, with a dark-coloured elongated fungus growing out of a larva’s head.
In Chinese, the two-faced creature is called dong chong xia cao, which translates as “winter worm, summer grass”. During the winter, yarsagumba is worm-like, but by the summer, invaded by fungus, it looks more like a plant.
Mature yarsagumba resembles nothing so much as a matchstick, thin and slender, projecting two to three centimetres above the ground across the alpine meadows of the Himalayas.
The youth and kids collect it and make a living out of it. It is very popular for men.
