Tag: tribe

Hallucinogenic Honey From The Himalayan Bees

By Anupum Pant

With over 3.5 Million Gurungs living in Nepal, the Gurung people are found all over the country and beyond. However, near the peaks of Himalayas, beyond which no human settlements are found, lives a secretive Gurung tribe called the honey hunters, in the secret villages that are surrounded by thick forests.

In these high forests live a certain kind of bee, the world’s largest honey bee – The Giant Bee of Himalayas (up to 3 cm length) – are found in huge nests built on the overhanging rocks of cliff faces. These nests can reach up to 5 feet in diameter and each of these nests can contain about 60 kg of honey! But that is not even the most interesting part about them yet…

The honey made by these bees is a product that comes from the nectar of kinds of poisonous flowers. That is probably what makes this honey – Red Honey – medicinal, intoxicating and hallucinogenic. Since it is difficult to harvest and has special properties, this kind of honey is expensive and sells for about 4 times the price of normal honey in the foreign market. So, the honey hunters take absurd risks to get the honey from overhanging nests up in the cliffs.

Also, besides the mad hallucinogenic honey, another awesome thing I did not know was that bees create a Mexican wave to warn the attackers approaching their nest. Seen at 14:40 of the documentary below.

I stumbled upon this amazingly beautiful 25-minute documentary by Raphael Treza which takes you through the ways of this tribe and their mad honey hunting ritual.

Also, you can’t miss this detailed Photo-documentary which beautifully captures, in still images, the Gurung tribe’s ways. [Here]

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The Tarahumara People Can Run for 400 Miles Non-Stop

By Anupum Pant

The marathon is one of the most popular long-distance running events and is followed by people from around the world. An athlete, to even finish the ~42 km race, has to go through a training that lasts several months (or years).The training is designed to develop the slow twitch muscle fibers which enables athletes to run for a long distances without getting tired. But, lacking access to all the hi-tech training equipment, there are people who can run fifteen times that in one session.

Tarahumara people or ‘Running people’ are a group of Native American people living in the north-western Mexico who can run 400+ miles in around 50 hours! Sounds impossible, but it is true. Astonishingly, the entire tribe consisting of men, women, old and young, every one of them is capable of running at least 250+ miles in a single run, without shoes. Such extreme feat of endurance has never been seen among humans anywhere else in the world.

They are the kind of people who run to live. They have running events lasting more than 200 miles regularly. They run to send messages and they run for food; Like Michael Stevens from Vsauce says, as hunters humans who can run persistently, can outrun even horses.

In fact, I thought about writing this after I watched a very interesting video on Vsauce and was feeling uneasy that Michael had missed the Tarahumara people. – [Video]

Where do they get the energy? – Unlike athletes who last on energy gained from Gatorade (or other drinks), these people run on copious amounts of a beverage made from corn, to keep up with the amount of calories they burn in a single event – around 43,000 calories. A great workout indeed!

One thing that has confused me: If they can run 400 miles with ease, why don’t they take part in the marathon events? I’m guessing that they run for long but don’t run as fast as a marathon runner. If you know why, tell me in the comments section below.

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