Indian Himalayas, India - 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.
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Maria Tavernini and Andrea de Franciscis ~AlJazeera.com ~
