In the produce aisle at your local grocery story, button mushrooms go for about $4 a pound, Shitakes cost about twice that, and black truffles can run $800 a pound. But that's nothing compared to a ...

The hunt for a fungus that is worth more than its weight in gold as a traditional medicine is transforming the Himalayan landscape on which it grows. To learn more, I have come to the Sowa Rigpa ...

In the hills of Nepal, a new commodity is capturing the imagination. But what exactly is ‘Himalayan Viagra’ and what is its future as a resource? Yartsa gunbu has become much coveted in Nepal Deep ...

In high-alpine meadows of the Tibetan Plateau, early May is an auspicious time to prostrate oneself on the loamy, reclining slopes and dig around for desiccated remnants of a medicinally hallowed ...

Tshering* has collected yartsa gunbu, one of the world’s most valuable biological commodities, from the mountains surrounding his home for more than 40 years. He lives in the remote region of Dolpa, ...

Overwhelmed by speculators trying to cash-in on a prized medicinal fungus known as Himalayan Viagra, two isolated Tibetan communities have managed to do at the local level what world leaders often ...

Move over truffles and saffron—there’s a new superstar in the world of luxury fungi, and it’s straight out of the Himalayas. Meet Yartsa Gunbu, famously known as the Caterpillar Fungus. While your ...

Ram Bahadur Jafra and his two brothers crouch on a field, picking through blades of grass and staring at the soil. They have traveled five days by foot to a Himalayan meadow at a 4,300 meter elevation ...

Two isolated Tibetan communities have implemented a successful system for sustainably harvesting the Himalayan Viagra, a medicinal fungus fetching big money in the Chinese market. New research from ...