Malana Valley

Malana Valley
Malauna Valley
Cannabis fields above Atolang, looking down the valley towards Malana, Jari and the Parvati, September 2023.
⛶
Hierarchy
Gene Pool	South Asian Gene Pool
Regional Complex	Hindu Kush-Himalayan
Growing Region	Western Himalayas
Geography
Country	India
Province/State	Himachal Pradesh
District	Kullu District
Coordinates	32.08, 77.28
Landscape
Elevation	2,494–3,132 m
Terrain	Narrow glacier-fed side valley of the Parvati closed at its mouth by a gorge; fields on shelves and slopes above the torrent, conifer forest and high pastures
Climate
Climate Type	Cold for most of the year, with a long snowy winter
Rainfall	1,250 mm
Seasons	Winter (mid-Sep–mid-Apr), summer (mid-Apr–mid-Jun); more than half the rain falls mid-Jun–mid-Sep
Documentation
Appellations	7
Accessions	32
Conservation
Status	Unknown

Malana Valley is a landrace cannabis growing area in the Western Himalayas growing region, comprising the valley of the Malana torrent in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India. The torrent rises at about 6,200 m on the Dudhan Glacier and drains a catchment of about 158 km², 76.2 km² of it under glacier or above the permanent snow line, on a course parallel to the Parvati, which it joins from the north at Jari. The village of Malana stands on the right bank of the torrent at about 9,000 ft (2,740 m), 15 km from Jari.^: §2.1 The torrent drains into the Parvati Valley; that valley and the Kullu Valley across the Chanderkhani Pass to the west are documented as separate growing areas.

The accession pages record 24 accessions from the 2022 harvest collected under the expedition code HIMA01 (ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220009 to ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220032), four more collected at Atolang on 16 October 2025 (ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250004 to ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250006 and ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250021) and a seed line that The Real Seed Company sells as "Malana Cream" (RSC-IND-HIM-0120210001). They come from Malana and its fields and from the hamlets of Nirang, Wailing, Atolang and Waichin, at elevations recorded between 2,494 and 3,132 m. The collection documentation of the Zomia Collective names these five places as the valley's main settlements.

G. M. Young, a colonial official who visited in 1911, described the village's isolation and the cult of its deity, Jamlu. The Linguistic Survey of India described its language, Kanashi, in 1909 as "the dialect spoken in a glen within the Bias valley, containing only the village". The anthropologist Richard Axelby, revisiting the fieldwork that Colin Rosser carried out in Kullu and Malana in 1951 and 1952, notes that Rosser's review of the village's agriculture never mentions cannabis; he dates the adoption of commercial cultivation to the late 1970s.^: 53–54 The charas of the valley is sold under the name "Malana Cream", which the Associated Press reported in 2016 had "earned legendary status among pot smokers around the world". Axelby describes police teams arriving each September, before the harvest, to try to destroy the standing fields.^: 56 Reporting on the state's 2026 rules for licensed cultivation named cannabis as the source of the illicit trade in charas "in Kullu's Parvati Valley and high-altitude Malana".

Geography

Cannabis near Atolang in October 2025, with the forested far side of the valley behind.

The design document of the Malana-II hydroelectric project describes the catchment of the Malana torrent as elongated and leaf-shaped, joined along its course by several side streams and glaciers and adjoining the catchment of the Tosh Nallah, another tributary of the Parvati. A study of the watershed from satellite imagery measured its glacier area at 39.19 km² in 2001 and 32.97 km² in 2017. Over the same period built-up land grew from 0.1 to 0.14 km². The authors attribute the growth of built-up and farmed land to tourism in the Parbati valley and to the upward spread of horticulture; they name hydropower development and road construction among the human activities that change land use.

A. H. Diack, in an account quoted by the Linguistic Survey of India, wrote that where the Malana stream meets the Parbati "the sides of the glen are steeply precipitous". Colin Rosser listed "an eight-mile long gorge closing the exit" among the features of the glen.^: 38 G. M. Young, who went up the ravine to the village in March 1911, described the spurs on either side ending "abruptly in a mass of precipices above the Parbati river". The village of Malana lies on "a comparatively barren strip of ground on the edge of a narrow gorge", with Manikaran, Kasol and Rasol to the east, Jari to the south and the Chanderkhani Pass and the Naggar valley to the west, according to a resurvey of the village made in 2016–17 and published in 2018.^: §2.1 Young placed the mountain of Jamlu, marked on maps as Deo Tibba, at the head of the glen. The village is built in two halves, Dhara Behr and Sara Behr, with a neutral central square, the harchar, between them; the resurvey places Dhara Behr, the upper part, to the west and Sara Behr to the east.^{: 42: §2.1} Axelby's 2023 foreword puts Dhara Behr on the east and Sara Behr on the west.

Rosser gave the height of the village as "just under 9000 feet" and the resurvey as "about 9000 ft"; a 2021 linguistic profile gives "approximately 10,000 ft", the collection documentation 2,600 m and the accession pages 2,494 m for the village fields.^{: 38: §2.1} The resurvey divides "the Malana territory" into six sub-divisions: Malana, Thosko, Nerong, Dhadon, Magic Valley and Bhelag.^: §2.1 The collection documentation calls Nirang, from whose lower reaches the path to Malana begins, "the main jumping off point for visitors". It calls Waichin "the furthest settlement on the way up the valley to the glacier"; the Thal fields beyond Waichin and "Ralli Thatch" above it are, in its words, "the highest altitude fields in Malana Valley". It records that the area was historically known as Bhutoling; the name Nirang now covers both the lower settlement and "the older village 300m above". It pairs the name Mejigh with Magic Valley and Weling with Wailing. None of these hamlets or sub-divisions is enumerated as a separate village in the 2011 Census.

The accession pages give elevations of 2,494 m for the Malana village fields and 2,743 m for the Tosco field, 2,779 to 3,062 m at Atolang, 2,828 m at Wailing and 2,891 to 3,132 m at Waichin and its Upper and Thal fields; the Nirang accessions carry coordinates but no elevation. The collection documentation gives 2,400 to 2,800 m for the Malana village populations and 2,600 to 3,000 m for the Malndr field; it describes Atolang as "cultivated at elevations of 2800-3200m".

Passes and approaches

Young described high ranges on either side of the valley, crossed by two passes of "about 13,000 feet", the eastern leading to Manikaran and the western to Naggar in the Beas valley. Both routes were "steep and troublesome and practically closed during the winter months"; a third route, up the ravine itself and used by the men of Malana in winter, had "the reputation of being extremely dangerous". A. F. P. Harcourt described in 1871 a route that left Manikaran along the right bank of the Parvati, climbed the "Kundee Pass" at Chulaul, touched Malana and crossed the "Malauna Pass" to Naggar.^: 64 Modern accounts connect the valley with Naggar over the Chanderkhani Pass; a linguistic profile also names "Rashol, a mountain pass", the Rasol Pass.^: §2.9 The resurvey lists five approaches: tracks from Naggar by Rumsu and Chanderkhani (18 km), from Jana by Chanderkhani (17 km) and from Manikaran by Rasol (16 km); roads from Jari (15 km) and from Bhuntar (52 km). It notes that the old approach ran along the torrent, "locally called Chowki Nalah".^: §2.9

Administration

Rosser wrote in 1952 that Malana, "though located administratively in Kullu tahsil, is unique in Kullu".^: 38 The 2011 Census places the village in Kullu sub-district and the Naggar community development block, 48 km from Kullu. The district administration's current list of gram panchayats also places Malana in the Naggar block. A notice of May 2025 delimiting the wards of the Kullu zila parishad placed the Malana panchayat in one ward with Jari, Kasol and Manikaran, under the Bhuntar development block. The May 2025 delimitation was later cancelled on a court's direction; the re-delimitation notified on 18 February 2026 keeps Malana in the same ward. The accession pages record Bhuntar tehsil and Bhuntar block.

Climate

The resurvey gives the village's annual rainfall, "as per the conservative estimates", as 1,250 mm, more than half of it falling between mid-June and mid-September. It describes a cold winter from mid-September to mid-April, with an average snowfall of 5 to 10 feet, followed by a short summer from mid-April to mid-June in which the temperature rises to about 28 °C.^: §2.7 The forest around the village "consists of Deodar, Kail, Chil and Blue-pine trees", with spruce and silver fir at higher altitudes.^: §2.8 Rosser's scheme of Kullu agriculture puts the highest villages in the gahar, the highland zone, where "the altitude permits only one crop annually – and even this is imperilled by the possibility of late snow during severe winters"; Axelby notes that Malana, at 9,000 feet, would be expected to share those conditions.^: 47

History

Colonial accounts

Harcourt recommended extending a tour of Kullu over the Kundee and Malauna passes, "the village of Malauna, with its curious people, being one of the special objects of interest in Kooloo".^: 291 J. B. Lyall's settlement report of 1874 used the glen as a boundary mark: Waziri Parol, the revenue division of the upper Beas, took in "the right side of the Parbatti valley up to the mouth of the Malauna gorge, whence the line climbs to the ridge which divides the Malauna valley from Mani Karan". Lyall also recorded, as Axelby quotes him, that "all the lands in the Malana glen were granted to Jamlu by the Rajas".^: 48 The gazetteer of 1897 described Malana as "a village of two or three hundred inhabitants" and "the only hamlet in a very deep and narrow glen".

Young recorded that in 1883, when the village "had been giving trouble", a mountain battery on the march in Kullu was sent up to it. The men of Malana had to make a road over the pass for the troops. They later told travellers that soldiers who entered the sacred precincts had been struck by Jamlu with "momentary dumbness and loss of sight". Rosser recorded an oral account in which, as Axelby summarises it, a British punitive expedition was driven off by "a swarm of angry bees sent by Jamlu".^: 56

The village in the 1950s

Rosser arrived in Kullu in 1951. After the more conservative faction in the village refused to let him live there, he spent the winter at Jari; in the spring of 1952 he was allowed to pitch a tent at the edge of Malana. He left Kullu in December 1952.^{: 41, 46–47, 51} His first account, published in The Economic Weekly in May 1952, described a village with "its own system of village government, its own court for settling disputes, and a measure of village autonomy quite distinct from that of other Kullu villages".^{: 39–40, 46}

His doctoral thesis of 1956 described the economy that supported the village. Axelby, summarising it, writes that Jamlu was made overlord of land "in villages scattered in the main Beas valley and in Wazeeri Rupi to the south"; a share of the rice and barley grown on it, the kar, was carried to the god's treasury at Malana. Twice a year a party of "some 60-80" Malanis went down to collect it, measuring the grain in a basaju that, Axelby notes, was twice the usual size. Rosser saw the kar as "a vital contribution to the Malani economy" and a partial explanation of how Malana, "though one of the highest villages in Kullu", was "also one of the largest".^: 48–49 Before he left, a sub-divisional officer told him that the government intended to abolish all grants of land to temples "in the near future".^: 51–52

Commercial cannabis

Axelby found no mention of cannabis in Rosser's review of agricultural production in 1950s Malana. He dates the village's adoption of commercial cultivation to "some point in the late 1970s".^: 53–54 Malani accounts, he writes, credit an Italian known as "Glenu" with teaching the village to make charas by the "hand-rubbed" technique.^: 54 In a foreword to the 2023 book edition of Rosser's thesis he wrote that in the 1970s and 1980s "a handful of European charas enthusiasts took up residence in Malana" and that the villagers took up their technique and began making and selling charas themselves. Axelby identifies Glenu with Galeno, the author of a 1998 account of the introduction of cannabis cultivation to Malana. He also points to a news report of an Italian's arrest near Malana.^: 54 The Kullu police arrested Galeno, "an Italian in his 60s", at a transit house in "Neerang, near Malana" for staying on after his visa expired in 2008; he was held under the Foreigners Act while the police investigated him as a suspected facilitator of the narcotics trade.

A 2019 study of drug tourism, based partly on a stay in the village in 2017, records an old villager's account that in the late 1970s a foreign tourist showed the villagers how to take "an inebriating tar(Hash)" from the plant, after which they began to grow it commercially. The study reports that around 2010 to 2012 the local government supported the growing of peas and lilium in Malana in place of cannabis with the promise of a fixed price. According to the study it offered only 30 per cent of that price; the villagers then went back to cannabis. By September 2013 seven guesthouses ringed the village, catering to backpackers.^: 54 Maheshwar Singh, a local lawmaker and descendant of the former royal family of Kullu, told the Associated Press in 2016 that the villagers had "a reason to stick to that plantation because that is the only way they can earn their living"; the government's policy of providing them with alternative employment, he said, had not been carried out.

Roads and hydropower

Rosser walked to Malana from Jari, a day's journey. By September 2013 "a jeep-able road carved into the walls of the Malana valley" came within an easy stroll of the village; Axelby writes that it was built to serve the hydroelectric projects on the Malana River. On the way up he passed a checkpoint outside the Forest Department's offices and a police post.^: 53 The resurvey dates the road to 2007 and a ropeway between the old village and the road, about 3 km away, to 2015; a Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus had run between Kullu and Malana since 2016.^: §2.9

The 86 MW Malana hydroelectric project of the Malana Power Company was built between January 1999 and July 2001, with a 9 km mountain access road. Statkraft sold its 49 per cent stake in the company to the LNJ Bhilwara Group in September 2025. The design document of Everest Power's 100 MW Malana-II project places its dam about 3 km upstream of the village at 2,500 m and an underground powerhouse at 1,910 m on the left bank of the torrent; the Ministry of Environment and Forests approved its environmental impact assessment in June 2005, after a public hearing in May 2004. Cloudbursts damaged the dam of the Malana-I project on 1 August 2024 and again on 1 August 2025. The 2025 flood washed away the footbridge between Malana and Pohal and cut the village off.

Axelby records a fire in November 2008 that destroyed the Sara Behr half of the village with its central temple and the house of the Pujara.^: 54 The resurvey records a fire, dated 2007 in one section and 2007–08 in another, that damaged part of the Jamlu Devta temple and gutted a large part of the village.^{: §4.5, §5.2}

Demography

The gazetteer of 1897 gave Malana two or three hundred inhabitants; Young gave 376 "at the time of the last census". Rosser's census of 1952, as Axelby reports it, recorded 119 households and 116 families organised in eight patrilineal clans; elsewhere Axelby gives it as 116 households. Rosser's thesis of 1956 gives 112 households.^{: 42, 48} The resurvey, which covered every household in 2017, counted 317 households and 1,969 people; it gives 153 households and 764 people for 1981 and 170 households and 954 people for 1991. Between 1991 and 2017 the sex ratio rose from 923 to 993 females per 1,000 males.^{: §1.5, §4.1, ch. VII} At the 2011 Census the village had 365 households and 1,722 inhabitants on 179 ha. Of these, 28 were Scheduled Caste and none Scheduled Tribe; 545 were literate. Of its 904 main workers, 873 were cultivators. A genetic study published in 2010 gave the village a census size of 1,101.

Young described the community as consisting "mainly of Kanets" with a few Dagis; Rosser's 1956 count gave 109 Kanet households, one of weavers and two of ironsmiths.^: 48 The resurvey states that, except for five families of weavers and blacksmiths, "all families belong to rajput caste". It records that the state government classified the whole population of Malana as Other Backward Classes in 2007.^: §2.6.1 Young recorded that the two halves of the village married only each other, with brides also taken from Rashol when required. A genetic study of 48 people from the village found reduced genetic diversity compared with the caste and pastoral populations of India, which it attributed to drift and limited gene flow in "the highly endogamous Malana village", but "no evidence" of a severe bottleneck.

Language

The people of Malana speak Kanashi, a Sino-Tibetan language of the West Himalayish branch "spoken by some 2,000 individuals in one single village" and separated from other Sino-Tibetan communities "by a girdle of Indo-Aryan speaking villages"; a close genealogical relation with Kinnauri, spoken more than 200 km away, has been suggested. A 2021 profile, citing Ethnologue, puts the number of speakers at 1,400. It describes a language with no written form, used at home and in the village and classed by UNESCO as "definitely" endangered. Rosser found that the Malanis used Kullui with outsiders and Kanashi among themselves; the resurvey records that almost every villager understands Hindi.^{: 38–39: §2.4} The Linguistic Survey of India described the language in 1909 from two specimens and a word list supplied by G. C. L. Howell, Assistant Commissioner of Kulu. It quoted A. H. Diack's account of the glen, which ends: "The village of Malana is thus very isolated, and to this isolation doubtless is due the preservation of the ancient and curious dialect spoken there".

Culture

Cannabis growing beside a house at Atolang, October 2025.

Jamlu

The village deity is Jamlu. Rosser found him widely called "the most powerful" of the Kullu gods and wrote that "to an important extent, Jamlu can be regarded as the deification of the village, and as the apotheosis of the villagers".^{: 37, 42} Young recorded that "Jamlu himself has no temple at Malana", the one real temple in the village being that of Naroi, Jamlu's wife in the village's account; the resurvey refers to a temple of Jamlu Devta.^: §5.2 Young took the name Jamlu to be "a hill corruption of Jamad-Agni", the rishi Jamadagni. He recorded a story told at Malana of a Brahman who brought the god an orthodox pedigree and was struck speechless in the temple.

In a legend given by the district administration, Jamlu was crossing the Chanderkhani Pass "with a basketful of Gods" and opened it on the pass; a strong breeze scattered the gods of Kullu to their present seats. Young recorded a similar story, in which Jamlu and Naroi carried "a casket containing the other gods of Kulu". He also recorded a tradition that placed Jamlu's first home at Hamta above Jagatsukh. In the Kullu tradition that Axelby records, the gods of Kullu did not want Jamlu, who had reached the Hampta Pass, to settle among them; as he crossed a swing bridge in a basket, they kicked the basket over the mountains into the Malana glen.^: 36–37 The resurvey records a Malani legend in which Jamlu, as Jamdagni Rishi, came from Batant in Spiti, settled at Hamta near Naggar and defeated a demon, Danu, who gave up Malana on condition that its people kept their language.^: §1.2

At the Kullu Dussehra, Axelby writes, Jamlu "does not enter Kullu town but instead maintains a detached position on the far bank of the river Beas"; Young recorded that Jamlu alone of the Kullu gods declined to acknowledge the overlordship of Raghunathji.^: 36 The resurvey states that Jamlu "does not visit any other place and remains at Malana".^: §2.6.5 Brigitte Luchesi, writing of the deities said to be obliged to visit the hot springs of Vashisht at least once a year, names "devtā Jamlū from Malana" among the exceptions.^: 74 Young recorded that Jamlu's elder brother Gaiphan, the god of a peak in Lahul, was believed to come once a year to his temple at Barshaini in the Parvati valley to meet Jamlu, after which the two gods went to a place two miles away to bathe together. The Associated Press reported in 2016 that a statue of Jamlu was to be carried "across the daunting mountain of Rasol to bathe it in holy water in a temple in the neighboring valley", a five-day journey on which one man from each household had to go.

Young attended Jamlu's annual festival in March 1911. On the 12th of the month of Phagan, statuettes that, in the village's account, the emperor Akbar had sent to placate Jamlu were brought out and set before a small stone in a grove above the village; the rite Young watched included the sacrifice of a ram. Women sang songs in "Naroi's language", which the men did not profess to understand. The resurvey names Malana Shauni, held on 15 August, as the main festival of the village.^: §2.6.5

Village government

Young described the kardar, who managed the god's treasury and estate, two further pujaris and the gur or prophet, with eight elders, the jathere, elected every three or four years from eight wards, who "act as a government and decide all disputes"; their penalty was the fine, rarely more than eight annas, paid into Jamlu's treasury. In Rosser's account decisions were taken by the mundie (three hereditary office-holders) together with the jestas (eight elected elders) and then put to an assembly of household heads, the chakars, where agreement had to be unanimous. He identified the three hereditary posts, Karmisht, Pujara and Gur, as Jamlu's estate agent, priest and oracle.^: 43 The resurvey describes an 11-member Devta Committee and a council of two houses. The upper house (Jestang) comprises the kardar, the pujari and the goor with eight jatheres elected from four wards; the lower house (Kanistang) is formed of the heads of families. It notes that the post of goor had been vacant for 25 years, its duties performed by the pujari.^: §5.3 The village also has an elected panchayat and pradhan of the state system, which Axelby describes as operating separately from the traditional council.^{: §5.2, §5.3: 54} A senior district official described Malana to Axelby in 2013 as "India's first independent village republic".^: 57

In Rosser's time outsiders were forbidden to touch people, possessions or buildings, on pain of a fine.^: 39 In 2013 signs on the harchar and the temple warned of a fine of Rs 2,500 for touching or photographing the temple.^: 53 The resurvey records a fine of Rs 3,500 for any outsider who touches or tries to enter the temple's inner premises. The Devta Committee banned the drinking of liquor in Malana in 1986.^: §2.6.6

Traditional cultivation

A flowering plant near Atolang, October 2025.

The resurvey describes cannabis collection as a seasonal occupation of the whole village. It states that "the entire population of Malana is spending 2-3 months annually in the collection of cannabis (Bhang), a minor forest product from the wild" and that almost all Malanis earn money by collecting the plant from the forest; they also grow it on arable land.^{: §2.8, §6.20} In October and November, it records, "all adult family members and even school going children" take part in collecting "high value herbs" from "public support land", earning "a lot of money from the sale of 'banned herbs'".^: §6.27 The surveyors found no one in Malana willing to disclose the source or amount of their income from cannabis.^: §6.34 The 2011 Census recorded 130 ha of net sown area in the village, all of it unirrigated, with maize, wheat and vegetables as its main crops.

The collection documentation classifies the valley's population as an "NLD type Landrace population" of plants 1 to 4 m tall, the narrow-leafed drug type. It describes Nirang as "a major hub for traders and buyers who often prefer to make transactions at the trailhead rather than hiking into Malana itself". Atolang, in its account, produces "smaller batches of local-use resin rather than mass-market supply". The accession pages distinguish three kinds of collection: general populations gathered by charas-makers; selections from particular villages or fields; feral selections. The 2025 Atolang accessions are recorded as grown in rotating monoculture on slopes facing south and south-east.

Planting season

The collection documentation gives the planting season as spring. The accession pages that record it give sowing from March to May.

Harvest

The collection documentation gives the harvest as October to November. Axelby describes the police raids as coming "in the run-up to the harvest season each September".^: 56 In his 2023 foreword he gives the harvesting season of the 1970s and 1980s as "July to October". The accession pages that record a harvest window give September to December; the Real Seed Company line gives late September to October. The 2025 Atolang accessions were collected on 16 October.

Processing

Charas at Malana is made by hand-rubbing: Axelby describes the technique as drawing resin from the plant "by massaging each flowering leaf between the palm and fingers".^: 54 In 2016 the Associated Press described a woman ending a day's work with about 20 g of hashish. The resurvey records that "the by-product of the product is burnt" and that the seed is dried on the roofs; the seed is mixed with wheat flour for chapattis in winter, "which keep body warm".^{: §2.8, §6.34} Hemp fibre was used for footwear: shoes called khobe "were made from the threads mainly prepared from Bhang (a narcotics plant-cannabis) and other fibres"; the older generation still wore them at the time of the resurvey.^: §2.3 The Associated Press reported Maheshwar Singh pointing to the use of hemp fibre in ropes and in traditional pula slippers, which it described as still "the only footwear allowed for pilgrimages".

Malana Cream

Main article: Malana Cream

A 2021 Tribune report on Kullu district stated that charas "produced at Banjar, Kullu, Manali, Anni and Nirmand areas in Kullu is known as Malana cream". An IANS report of December 2022 described Malana Cream as "considered to be the purest form of hashish" and "derived by the locals from the cannabis grown illegally in the surrounding Parvati Valley"; the same report described a seizure of "30 kg Malana cream" by the Delhi police. Outlook described it in 2026 as "premium-grade charas ... in high demand within India and abroad".

Axelby wrote in 2015 that a batch of Malana Cream entered at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam in 1995 "was adjudged to be one of the two finest hashish smokes in the world", citing a cannabis forum thread and a seed company's product page for the claim; in his 2023 foreword he gave the year as 1994.^: 52 The Associated Press reported in 2016 that the hash had "won the High Times Cannabis Cup at least twice"; The Tribune in 2018 called it "adjudged as numero uno at Amsterdam". A 2019 drug-tourism study gives the same 1995 date.

Appellations

Appellation	Status
Atolang (appellation)
Malana (appellation)
Mejigh (appellation)
Nirang (appellation)
Rengrang Chin (appellation)
Thal (appellation)
Waichin (appellation)

The accessions name five appellations: Malana, Nirang, Wailing, Atolang and Waichin.

Accessions

Accession ID	Name	Locality	Elevation	Priority	Collected
COC-IND-HIM-0100000004	Lama Malana General Population	Malana
COC-IND-HIM-0100000006	Malana General Population	Malana
RSC-IND-HIM-0120210001	Malana Cream General Population 2021	Malana		Medium	2021
VIB-IND-HIM-0100000001	Malana General Population	Malana
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220009	Waichin General Population 2022	Waichin	2,891 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220010	Waichin 'Village' Selection 2022	Waichin	2,891 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220011	Waichin 'Upper' Selection 2022	Waichin	3,132 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220012	Waichin 'Thal' Selection 2022	Waichin	3,013 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220013	Waichin 'Thal' Feral Selection 2022	Waichin	3,013 m	Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220014	Waichin Feral Selection 2022	Waichin	2,891 m	Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220015	Wailing General Population 2022	Wailing	2,828 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220016	Wailing 'Village' Selection 2022	Wailing	2,828 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220017	Wailing Feral Selection 2022	Wailing	2,828 m	Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220018	Atolang General Population 2022	Atolang	2,779 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220019	Atolang 'Village' Selection 2022	Atolang	2,779 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220020	Atolang 'Upper' Selection 2022	Atolang	3,062 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220021	Atolang 'Kishan's' Selection 2022	Atolang	2,779 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220022	Atolang Feral Selection 2022	Atolang	2,779 m	Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220023	Malana 'Village' General Population 2022	Malana	2,494 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220024	Malana 'Village' Selection 2022	Malana	2,494 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220025	Malana 'Tosco' Selection 2022	Tosco	2,743 m	Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220026	Malana 'Malndr' Selection 2022	Malana
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220027	Malana Feral Selection 2022	Malana		Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220028	Nirang General Population 2022	Nirang		Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220029	Nirang 'Bhutoling' Selection 2022	Nirang		Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220030	NIrang 'Top' Selection 2022	Nirang		Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220031	NIrang 'Black' Selection 2022	Nirang		Medium
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020220032	Nirang 'Feral' Selection 2022	Nirang		Low
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250004	Atolang Green Mango Selection 2025	Atolang	3,000 m	Medium	16 October 2025
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250005	Atolang Black Selection #1 2025	Atolang	3,000 m	Medium	16 October 2025
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250006	Atolang Black Selection #2 2025	Atolang	3,000 m	Medium	16 October 2025
ZOM-IND-HIM-1020250021	Atolang General Population 2025	Atolang	3,000 m	Medium	16 October 2025

By conservation priority

Priority	Count
Critical	0
High	0
Medium	22
Low	6

Coco Genes accessions

Two of the accessions in the table above are Coco Genes lines that give Malana as their locality: COC-IND-HIM-0100000004 ("Lama Malana General Population") and COC-IND-HIM-0100000006 ("Malana General Population"), the second known only from a forum post.

Enforcement

Cannabis cultivation and the production of charas are offences under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, which came into force on 14 November 1985.^: 508 Axelby, who reached Malana in September 2013 the day after a raid, describes police teams arriving each September to try to destroy the standing fields. He was told that the raids would not deter the villagers, that the police could not destroy the whole harvest because everyone in the village grew cannabis and that families whose fields were destroyed were compensated by the others. The villagers believed that the police were afraid to attack the village "because of the power of Jamlu".^: 56 The resurvey team saw a maturing crop standing on arable land beside a field destroyed by the police in the second week of October 2017. Its report describes frequent raids as "a part of this village life".^{: §6.24, §6.34}

A Press Trust of India report of 2026 stated that O. P. Sharma, as superintendent of the Narcotics Control Bureau's Chandigarh zonal unit, "led around a dozen combat and destruction operations in Malana, Manikaran, Tosh, Banjar, Kasol, Magic, Vichin, Pinsu, Thicho, Malander, Avgal Thar and adjoining areas between 2002 and 2006". A Tribune report of 2017 on the supply of heroin, cocaine and smack in the Kullu-Manali area stated that "international drug mafia was involved in supply to areas like Manikaran, Malana and Parbati valley frequented by a large number of foreigners". A list of cultivation areas in Kullu district published by The Tribune in 2019 included Malana, Waichin, Magic, "Neeramg", Bhelang, Thisco and Malandar Thach. The same report stated that "95 per cent of the cannabis is grown in high-altitude forest areas in perilous terrain in Kullu, Mandi, Shimla, Sirmaur and Chamba districts". In August 2020 the district police froze property worth Rs 27 lakh belonging to two Malana residents under section 68 of the Act, after one of them had been arrested with 698 g of charas that July. Punjab Kesari reported on 27 September 2026, citing departmental information, that a team of the Narcotics Control Bureau, the local police and the Forest Department had destroyed cannabis on about 15 hectares at Malana; the range forest officer at Kasol said the drive would continue.

The Associated Press reported in 2016 a local government estimate that 240 ha "in the region" had been under cannabis that year, producing more than 12,000 kg of hashish. A woman it interviewed said that "nothing else grows here" and that "whatever plants we do have are cut down by the police".

Regulated cultivation

The 2018 resurvey found that the people of the area needed either "an alternative development strategy" or an "enabling legal and economic protocol to make cannabis cultivation a legally recognized horticultural activity"; it called "regularization of cannabis farming including extraction of the narcotic substance" "the only solution to the conflict between the local villagers and the law keeping agencies". Officers of the Narcotics Control Bureau told the surveyors that the crop came under the narcotics law whatever its classification.^: §6.24 In July 2026 Himachal Pradesh permitted the controlled cultivation of cannabis for medicinal, scientific and industrial purposes under a licensing regime. Outlook reported the state government's view that such cultivation "can boost the rural economy", with Kullu among the districts where it could bring farmers new income.

Conservation status

Conservation status: Unknown. No formal assessment of the valley's populations has been made. The accession pages give medium conservation priority to the cultivated populations and selections and low priority to the feral selections; no priority is recorded for the Malndr selection. The Zomia accessions record cultivation as active. The collection documentation calls the Malana landrace "endangered", attributing this to "the construction of a road to Malana Village and the introduction of modern hybrids". It describes the future of the Atolang population as uncertain, citing "excessive culling of males", the "overuse of chemical inputs" and "modern hybrids and foreign genetics". Its status index tags Nirang village, the Terraces fields at Malana and Waichin village with its upper fields as under ongoing eradication. The Associated Press described Malana Cream in 2016 as produced "from higher-potency plants with hybrid seeds". The accession pages give the Zomia Genetic Library as the seed store of the Zomia accessions and The Real Seed Company as that of its line.

Recent news

Article	Date	Category
News:2026-09-27/Eradication/joint-teams-destroy-cannabis-on-about-25-hectares-at-tosh-and-malana-in-the-kasol-forest-range	27 September 2026	Eradication
News:2026-09-25/Eradication/ncb-led-joint-teams-begin-a-month-long-drive-to-destroy-illicit-cannabis-in-kullu-district	25 September 2026	Eradication
News:2025-01-06/Report/etv-bharat-and-the-tribune-report-different-2024-charas-seizure-totals-for-kullu-district	6 January 2025	Report
News:2023-10-11/Enforcement/police-arrest-34-and-find-2-83-lakh-cannabis-plants-on-forest-land-in-the-manikaran-valley	11 October 2023	Enforcement
News:2022-09-20/Eradication/central-bureau-of-narcotics-destroys-cannabis-on-12-900-bighas-of-forest-land-in-kullu-district	20 September 2022	Eradication
News:2022-04-29/Enforcement/police-destroy-160-kg-of-seized-charas-and-120-cannabis-plants-from-43-cases-in-kullu	29 April 2022	Enforcement
News:2021-11-16/Report/kullu-police-report-263-4-kg-of-charas-seized-and-110-872-cannabis-plants-destroyed-so-far-in-2021	16 November 2021	Report
News:2021-01-14/Enforcement/himachal-pradesh-police-report-seizing-122-kg-of-charas-and-295-kg-of-ganja-in-a-kullu-valley-operation	14 January 2021	Enforcement
News:2019-09-23/Report/kullu-police-report-cannabis-destroyed-on-6-175-bighas-in-2019-against-2-700-bighas-in-2018	23 September 2019	Report
News:2018-07-26/Report/kullu-district-police-data-record-164-foreign-nationals-arrested-with-drugs-since-2003	26 July 2018	Report
News:2012-01-07/Report/kullu-police-annual-report-for-2011-records-cannabis-destroyed-on-more-than-6-700-bighas	7 January 2012	Report

See also

• Himachal Pradesh
• India
• Kullu District
• Kullu Valley
• Malana
• Malana Cream
• Parvati Valley
• Western Himalayas