As I was going with the cordyceps auctioning team at cordyceps collecting Gewogs under Wangdue Dzongkhag I came across a young, female cordyceps collector, Phub Gyem at Dangchu. She is only 25 but very strong and independent. She is one among many who earns for the family. Cordyceps collecting is just one of the sources of income for her because she says she just can’t let her family go hungry by relying only on one source of income. She has been collecting the cordyceps for the past 7 years and this year isn’t a good harvest for her. Despite this her cordyceps were graded as the 1A grade among the others. This grade is the best one which has the best colour, all parts intact, larger in size and drier.
As much as we admire and value the fungus, it's worth seemed priceless after listening to the struggle stories of the collectors. They climb up to 5000-5800 metres above sea level(masl) everyday, walking for around 5 hours while their tents are pitched at 3000-4000 masl. They get only 2-3 hours to collect in a day. Some days they don’t even get one while on a good day they get around 1000 pcs from a location. Most of them survive on fast food such as packet noodles and tea. For Phub she had to leave her few months old baby behind to go to the mountains. Hence, to do justice to their struggle Government is organizing the auctioning to give them a fair price.
Well, there are fun parts of the story as well. She said it is fun to be sleeping under the sky, drinking water directly from the river and protecting the cordyceps they have collected. It is more fun when you have friends, she said and the story goes on and on.
The cordyceps collection has been legalized from 2004 and has been granted as a gift from the crown to give the highlanders to improve their livelihood. For this the collectors are highly indebted to the crown while so keeping in mind to sustainably harvest the gift and keep this going for all the generations to come.
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| Phub Gyem Took picture with her consent |