As twilight falls across the snowy peaks of the Himalayas, a herder scans the shadows with binoculars, searching for a lost yak. From a perch high above the tiny village of Nar, in western Nepal, he spots a stealthy movement in a desolate meadow just below the snowline. He sharpens the image. It’s a young man, a stranger. Just behind him is another. Eventually five more men creep into view, most still boys in their late teens, led by a man in his mid-thirties. The herder knows immediately who they are and why they are there. This ragged band of men has come to plunder the treasury of Nar – its fields of yarsagumba, a tiny, wrinkled fungus that is, by weight, the most valuable tonic in traditional Chinese medicine. It’s been prized for centuries as a potent aphrodisiac and an elixir of youth, and, on a good day, a yarsagumba picker can bag 400 pieces, which can be sold for as much as $1,000 – this in a country where the average annual income is $500.
His lost yak forgotten, the herder quickly clambers down the steep hillside to spread the alarm. The village elders convene a hasty meeting to organize a posse to repel the interlopers. Mukhya, the communal law of the Himalayas, requires that one adult male from each of Nar’s 60 households join the posse. During the night the men lay an ambush, surrounding the poachers’ high, isolated position.
