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Grahan

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Grahan
⛶
Hierarchy
Growing Region Western Himalayas
Growing Area Parvati Valley
Geography
Country India
Province/State Himachal Pradesh
District Kullu District
Tehsil Bhuntar Tehsil
Coordinates 31.9759, 77.3519
Settlement
Type Village
Access On foot from Kasol, 8–9 km
Landscape
Elevation 2,300–2,400 m
Terrain Forested side valley with terraced fields
Documentation
Appellations Grahan
Accessions 16

Grahan is a village in a side valley of the Parvati Valley in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India. It has no road connection: access is a footpath of roughly 8 to 9 km from Kasol, the road-head town in the valley.[1][2] The village core sits at about 2,300 to 2,400 m among forest and terraced fields.[1][3] Grahan gives its name to a charas-producing cannabis appellation whose plots extend from riverside terraces to high fields around 3,000 m.[4] The village has been named in eradication operations in Kullu district.[5]

Geography

Grahan lies in a forested side valley north of Kasol, on slopes of pine and deodar broken by terraced fields.[1][2] Neighbouring settlements in the same side valley are Thunja to the north-east and Pulgi to the south.[3] Trekking accounts describe a settlement of roughly 50 houses and about 350 residents, but no official figure exists: Grahan is not enumerated as a separate village in the 2011 Census of India and the district census handbook for Kullu lists no village of the name in the Parvati Valley.[6][7]

The village falls in Kullu district. At the 2011 census the surrounding tract lay in Kullu tehsil;[7] the district's tehsils were subsequently reorganised and a 2018 district directory lists a separate Bhuntar tehsil.[8][verification needed]

History

The colonial gazetteers of Kangra district, whose Kulu volumes describe the Parvati Valley and the stages of the Manikaran road in detail, do not mention Grahan: the route stages named include Jari, Manikaran and Pulga, with no village of this name recorded in either the 1897 or the 1917–18 edition.[9][10]

In the late 19th century official sources treated hemp in Kulu as a fibre crop: the 1897 gazetteer records that its cultivation was untaxed "as it is grown exclusively for the sake of the fibre",[9] and evidence collected by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission described charas-making from the local plant as marginal, one witness estimating that "a man can make in one day from Kulu bhang only enough for two smokes".[11] The same testimony records bhangolu, a parched hemp-seed food eaten against the cold, as most plentiful in Waziri Rupi, the revenue division that then comprised the Parvati Valley and its side glens.[11][9]

Cannabis cultivation

Main article: Grahan (appellation)

Farming at Grahan combines food and orchard crops with cannabis. A 2022 account of the village describes residents as farmers who "grow crops such as potatoes, apples, and charas",[6] and collection records from the village document a narrow-leafed drug-type landrace worked by hand-rubbing into charas.[3] Plots attributed to the village run from riverside terraces below the settlement through the main village fields to the Kutla fields at 2,700 to 3,000 m, the highest cultivation above the village.[3][4] Seed collections from the village and its fields are documented from 2022.[3]

District officials reported in 2019 that about 95 per cent of Kullu's cannabis cultivation had moved onto forest land.[12] Grahan has since figured in eradication campaigns. In September 2022 a two-week Central Bureau of Narcotics operation destroyed cannabis on 12,900 bigha (1,032 ha) of forest land across the district,[13] with Hindi-language coverage naming Grahan and Tosh among roughly 16 localities covered.[14] In October 2023 a joint police and Forest Department operation reported 34 arrests and some 283,000 plants destroyed on 235 bigha of forest land, naming Grahan village among the areas searched alongside the Manikaran valley, the Gahar area, Rajag Thach and Brahmganga forest.[5] District reporting for 2024 recorded about 2.65 million cannabis plants destroyed in Kullu.[15] Collection records list eradication as ongoing at the village fields; riverside plots were lost in 2024, with the loss attributed variously to eradication and to construction of a road up the valley.[4][2]

Tourism and access

Grahan is the first overnight stage on the Sar Pass trekking route, which runs from Kasol through the village and continues over Min Thach and Nagaru to the Sar Pass before descending past Biskeri Thach towards Barshaini.[16] A road up the valley was under construction in the mid-2020s and reached roughly halfway to the village.[2] In June 2026 a music festival was staged near the village, part of a wider party economy reported across the valley.[17] The village has also appeared in reporting on trekker disappearances: an Israeli hiker who went missing on a trek out of Kasol in December 2017 was found dead a month later at the foot of the village,[18] and a 2018 review of missing-foreigner cases in the Kullu valley lists Grahan among the villages named.[19]

Accessions

 NameIDTypeElevationPriority
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220011Grahan General Population 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220011General population2,321 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220012Grahan 'Village' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220012Selection2,321 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220013Grahan 'Riverside' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220013Selection2,187 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220014Grahan 'Lower Terraces' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220014Selection2,353 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220015Grahan 'Kutla' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220015Selection2,769 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220018Grahan Feral Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220018Selection2,298 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetLow
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220114Grahan 'Upper Terraces' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220114Selection2,425 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220115Grahan 'Topside' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220115Selection2,580 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220215Grahan 'Topside Purple Pheno' Selection 2022ZOM-IND-HIM-0920220215Selection2,580 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250012Grahan Kutla Lower Terrace Selection 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250012Selection2,650 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250013Grahan Kutla Middle Terrace Selection 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250013Selection2,650 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250014Grahan Kutla Forest Selection 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250014Selection2,700 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250015Grahan Kutla 'Tangie' Selection 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250015Selection2,700 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250016Grahan Village General Population #2 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250016General population2,370 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250017Grahan Village General Population #3 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250017General population2,370 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1120251700Grahan Village General Population 2025ZOM-IND-HIM-1120251700General population2,370 m;1meter;1meters;3.28084ft;3.28084foot;3.28084feetMedium

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Grahan, Parvati Valley". Holidify. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Trekking to Grahan Village from Kasol: A Hidden Gem in Parvati Valley". Travel Shoe Bum. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 "Grahan Valley". Zomia Collective. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Growing Regions". Zomia Collective. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Crackdown on cannabis mafia in Kullu, 34 arrested". The Tribune. 13 October 2023.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 D., Neeraj (14 July 2022). "Grahan Village – The Israelis' Home". Mysterious Himachal. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 District Census Handbook, Kullu: Village and Town Wise Primary Census Abstract (Report). Census of India 2011, Himachal Pradesh, Series 03, Part XII-B. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. 2011.
  8. ↑ Contact Directory 2018 (Report). District Disaster Management Authority, Kullu. 2018.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Diack, A.H. (1897). Gazetteer of the Kangra District, Parts II–IV: Kulu, Lahul and Spiti. Lahore: Punjab Government – via Internet Archive.
  10. ↑ Punjab District Gazetteers, Vol. XXX-A: Kangra District, Parts II–IV (Kulu, Lahul and Spiti). Lahore: Government of Punjab. 1918 – via Internet Archive.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Indian Hemp Drugs Commission (1894). Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893–94, Vol. V: Evidence of witnesses from the North-Western Provinces and Oudh and Punjab. Evidence of witness no. 10 (Mr. Alexander Anderson) – via Internet Archive.
  12. ↑ Lohumi, Bhanu P (24 September 2019). "Drones to spot cannabis crop in Himachal". The Tribune. Tribune News Service.
  13. ↑ "Cannabis plants destroyed on 12,900-bigha forestland in Kullu". The Tribune. Tribune News Service. 21 September 2022.
  14. ↑ Central Bureau of Narcotics की बड़ी कार्रवाई, 13 हजार बीघा भूमि से नष्ट की चरस की खेती [Major Central Bureau of Narcotics operation: charas cultivation destroyed on 13,000 bigha of land]. ETV Bharat (in हिन्दी). 20 September 2022.
  15. ↑ कुल्लू में चरस मामलों में आई कमी, एक्साइज के बढ़े मामले, तस्करों के निशाने पर नेपाली मूल के लोग [Charas cases fall in Kullu, excise cases rise, people of Nepali origin in the smugglers' sights]. ETV Bharat (in हिन्दी). 6 January 2025.
  16. ↑ "Sar Pass Trek - An ideal Himalayan trek for beginners". Indiahikes. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
  17. ↑ Mehra, Sakshi (29 June 2026). "Parvati Valley built a music, rave and drug economy. Now it doesn't know where it's headed". ThePrint.
  18. ↑ ToI Staff (3 January 2018). "Israeli missing for a month found dead on hiking trail in India". The Times of Israel.
  19. ↑ Manta, Dipender (1 December 2018). "The curious case of missing foreigners". The Tribune.
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