Yashargumba / यार्शागुम्बा

Last week when I was in Singapore, I caught a documentary titled Yarshagumba: The Himalayan Viagra which aired on the Australia Network. The documentary was about a fungus / herb that grows in the Himalayas that Nepalis risk their lives to collect every spring. The fungus in question is popularly known as 'cordyceps' (though 'cordyceps sinensis' is the scientific name for the particular species that is usually sold). It's an earthy (and by earthy I mean dirty) looking herb I'd seen quite often in the windows of Chinese medicine shops, but apart from the name, I didn't know what it was, let alone what it was used for.

According to Wikipedia, the Nepali word yarshagumba यार्शागुम्बा (even though it's transliterated as 'sh' Nepali doesn't distinguish the sounds 'sh' and 's') is derived from the Tibetan yartsa gumbu དབྱར་རྩྭ་དགུན་འབུ (literally, 'summer herb winter worm'). Similarly in Chinese you have 冬虫夏草 (literally, 'winter worm summer grass') or 虫草 'worm grass' for short. The reason for this odd name is that in winter, the 'herb' starts life as the larvae of any one of a few species of ghost moth found in the Himalayas. The larvae, which live underground, are infected by the spores of the cordyceps sinensis fungus. The fungus then grows in the moth larvae, killing and mummifying them. In spring, the fruiting body of the fungus emerges above the ground, and it's these tiny black stalks that people get on their hands and knees to look for at the beginning of spring.

As the title of the documentary suggests, the fungus is considered to have aphrodisiac properties and prized highly in Chinese medicine its ability to 'cure' other diseases like cancer etc. Consequently, hundreds of Nepalis rush up the slopes of the Himalayas in Western Nepal every year to try to gather as much of the stuff as possible, many of whom are ill-prepared for the extreme cold and occasional blizzard still associated with that time of year.

Sitting in a cafe in Kathmandu, I found 'yarcha gumba tea' on the menu, at an exorbitant 80 Rs a cup (about A$1.20) - double the price of regular tea. Being used to consuming products that people risk their lives to collect (think bird nest's soup), I thought I'd get a cup.

As usual, I expected to be disappointed - how much of an effect can one expect from a single cup? This is what I got:

I suppose I was even more disappointed that the tea came in a bag, with its black contents that really could have been anything. At the table someone noted that it smelt a little like Nepal, like the whole of Kathmandu with its marketplaces, smog and metallic water distilled in a single glass. I didn't think it was that bad, but it was nothing special either.

Kathmandu!

Arrived safely in Kathmandu yesterday. Singapore seems a world away. Except that all the tourist-oriented cafes look like they belong in Singapore, with prices to match. My friend Lauren came to pick me up from the airport with the guy from the guest house we're staying at. It's always nice to see a familiar face upon arrival.

I've start Nepali lessons tomorrow. I've booked in for about 15 hours of lessons starting tomorrow, with plenty of opportunity to practise out of class. I'm also meeting a speaker of Kagate (that Lauren introduced me to online) later in the week to talk about some dictionary making. I thinking I'll use a program called WeSay, but more on that later this week.

At the moment, my Nepali is really basic, but knowing some Hindi helps, and I can read Devanagari alright, albeit very slowly. My main problem now is that because I spent the last few days on Bintan (an Indonesian island just 1 hour away from Singapore), my brain keeps going to the little Malay / Indonesian it knows. Incidentally, Malay has historically borrowed many words of Sanskrit origin which are cognate with Nepali words e.g. bahasa 'language', so sometimes it helps, although the two languages are still grammatical worlds apart.

For non-Singaporeans, I also explained over breakfast that the name 'Singapore' itself has roots in Sanskrit (via Malay) - singa 'lion' and pura 'city / town'.

Smashing the ceremonial champagne bottle

It's back to the world of blogging for me, as I spend two weeks of limbo in Singapore waiting my visas to Nepal and India to be processed. With the MA in Linguistics behind me, I suppose it's time for another adventure.

This next trip starts with three weeks in Kathmandu, followed by two weeks of trekking in the Khumbu region around Everest. I'll be flying to India in early November, where I plan to be in the North east from early November to late January 2011.  I've never been to Nepal, and I only spent a few weeks in NE India in early 2009. (My last memory of Nagaland was getting poisoned by my breakfast omelette at the Hotel Japfü before having to catch a -thankfully quick- train from Dimapur to Diphu that same day.)

I'm interested in work that's happening in Nepal on endangered languages and looking at what can be done in NE India, which in theory is the main motivation for the blog. Of course, there'll be the odd hellish travel story (with details slightly embellished) and tales of language learning difficulties.

Looking forward to learning some Nepali over the next weeks!