Yarsagumba, the Himalayan Fungus Worth More Than Gold, Is Running Out in Nepal (2026)

High in Nepal's Karnali region, above 3,500 metres, there's a harvest that pays better than almost anything else a rural family can do, and it isn't a crop. It's a fungus that eats a moth from the inside out, and for six weeks every spring, whole villages in Dolpa and Mugu close their schools and climb into the alpine meadows to dig it up by hand.

It's called yarsagumba, or Ophiocordyceps sinensis, and the way it grows is genuinely strange: a fungal spore infects a ghost-moth caterpillar burrowed in the soil, kills it, mummifies it, and then sends a single dark stalk up through the caterpillar's head to break the surface. Harvesters spend all day on their hands and knees scanning short grass for that one thin stalk. Dried, it looks like a shrivelled twig with a caterpillar's body still attached. In Chinese and Tibetan traditional medicine it has been prized for centuries as a tonic, and its reputation as an aphrodisiac earned it the nickname "Himalayan Viagra."

A season that keeps getting harder, not easier

For many families in Dolpa, Mugu and neighbouring districts, this single harvest supplies more than half of their entire year's cash income, more than farming, more than day labour, more than anything else available at that altitude. That is exactly why entire communities still make the climb even as the fungus itself becomes harder to find: overharvesting and a warming climate have been thinning out the alpine meadows where it grows, and the Kathmandu Post reported in July 2026 that around 70 percent of the usual collectors didn't bother going up at all this year, judging the poor yields not worth the risk.

The risk is real. Nepal's Karnali Province police recorded four deaths from altitude sickness during the 2026 season, two collectors in Dolpa and two in Mugu, including 34-year-old Bhim Bahadur Bohara of Jumla, who died descending from Jagadulla pasture. Close to 50 others were rescued suffering from altitude-related illness. Camps sit at heights where AMS risk is already serious for acclimatised trekkers moving slowly with guides, let alone for families sprinting up from village elevation to dig for a month straight.

Prices keep climbing even as harvests shrink, because scarcity in international markets, chiefly China, keeps demand well ahead of supply; some top-grade pieces reportedly fetch tens of thousands of dollars per kilogram once they leave Nepal. That gap, a fungus worth more per gram than gold in Beijing but harvested by families earning a few hundred dollars for a season's climbing, is the whole story of who actually profits from it.

What this means for trekkers

It's also a reminder of how thin the margin is for the villages a trek like this passes through. Yarsagumba income is what buys school fees and rice through winter in some of Nepal's most remote districts, and it's declining at the same time the risk of collecting it is rising. Tourism income from trekking is one of the few things that doesn't depend on a fungus deciding to fruit in a good year.

Sources: The Kathmandu Post, "The Himalayas are running out of their prized harvest" (13 July 2026) and "Yarsagumba collection to open in Dolpa from May 24 for one month" (6 May 2026); Kathmandu Post, "Yarsagumba collectors face mounting dangers and dwindling income."

Cover photo: Abdul Kayum via Pexels (Pexels License).