Kashmir premium imported indian hash

Sizes for this Kashmir hash, labelled as a premium import from India, are 1 g, 1/8 oz, 1/4 oz, 1/2 oz and 1 oz. Sensi Seeds separates charas, the handmade hash of India rubbed from live, growing plants, from hashish, which is made from harvested ones.

Grown high in the hills

An 1874 reference book quoted by Sensi Seeds, Pharmacographia, tied charas to altitude: it came, the book said, from plants raised at a particular height in the hills, and not from hemp planted at random, even in India. Purists, Sensi Seeds adds, accept as real charas only what comes from the Himalayan part of India.

Sensi Seeds’ overview of cannabis in India describes farmers in remote Himalayan villages openly encouraging the crop, and notes that many regard charas as the best hashish anywhere. Malana, it says, grew so popular with visitors that it had to stop admitting tourists.

From Yarkand and Leh to a Kashmir plan

The UN’s Bulletin on Narcotics, in a 1953 article, traces an older supply line: charas came into India from Xinjiang, or Chinese Turkistan, by way of the trade centre at Yarkand, with an official warehouse at Leh. In that article, charas is India’s word for unrefined cannabis resin, and it was nearly always smoked. Once the Chinese-controlled trade ended in the 1930s, the article says, Kashmir State was considering local production as late as 1940 and 1941, though Indian-grown hemp reportedly yielded little resin. Some Nepali charas was also arriving in India in the 1940s, by the same account; our Nepalese hash guide explains what hash from Nepal is.

Kashmir in the hashish record

Most charas, by Sensi Seeds’ account, comes from Himachal Pradesh, with the Parvati Valley as one example, and from Kashmir; it turns up all over India, but little of it travels on to Europe. According to Wikipedia’s Hashish article, hashish brought in from India in quantity during the 1800s went by the name charas, and the article puts Kashmir on its list of places that produced the bulk of the hashish reaching Europe around 1900.

Sensi Seeds also notes that charas has its own unit of weight, the tola, set at 11.7 g, and that it is smoked from straight clay chillums, including as part of prayer to Shiva.

Before the first smoke

Health Canada classes hash as a high-THC extract and suggests first-time and occasional users stay clear of it; under its lower-risk guidelines, nobody should drive for 6 hours or more after using cannabis. Our guides cover ways to smoke it and other types of hash.