July 28th, 2017: Hi(gh) Honey

[xoxoxoBruce]

Due to my superior intelligence and close alliance with the Trump White House, I was able to discover Cellar member
nowhereman’s real name.
It’s Mauli Dhan, and the story of his life and trade, told by National Geographic, is quite long and fascinating.

Three hundred feet in the air, Mauli Dhan dangles on a bamboo rope ladder, surveying the section of granite he must climb to reach his goal: a pulsing mass of thousands of Himalayan giant honeybees. They carpet a crescent-shaped hive stretching almost six feet below a granite overhang. The bees are guarding gallons of a sticky, reddish fluid known as mad honey, which, thanks to its hallucinogenic properties, sells on Asian black markets for $60 to $80 a pound—roughly six times the price of regular Nepali honey.

Himalayan honeybees make several types of honey depending on the season and the elevation of the flowers that produce the nectar they eat. The psychotropic effects of the spring honey result from toxins found in the flowers of massive rhododendron trees, whose bright pink, red, and white blossoms bloom each March and April on north-facing hillsides throughout the Hongu Valley. The Kulung people of eastern Nepal have used the honey for centuries as a cough syrup and an antiseptic, and the beeswax has found its way into workshops in the alleys of Kathmandu, where it is used to cast bronze statues of gods and goddesses.

There is even a heavy in the story, Jangi Kulung.

He rations the pay for the eight other members of the honey-hunting team—all his cousins—according to their duties and experience. Mauli makes the most, about a hundred dollars for three days of death-defying work, twice a year. No one in Saddi knows how much Jangi earns from the harvest, and he won’t tell me, but he is the only person in the village who owns a house in Kathmandu.

Jangi said the big market was Korea, but somebody died from an OD and the market collapsed. Yeah, I expect the US heroin market to collapse any day.

One has to be careful not to eat too much of the honey, says Jangi. Two to three teaspoons is usually the correct dose. After about an hour you are overcome with an urgent need to defecate, urinate, and vomit. “After the purge you alternate between light and dark. You can see, and then you can’t see,” says Jangi. “A sound—jam jam jam—pulses in your head, like the beehive. You can’t move, but you’re still completely lucid. The paralysis lasts for a day or so.”

Two jars please. Fuck you Bill Cosby.

[Snakeadelic]

DO.

NOT.

SNEEZE!

[Snakeadelic]

Also, just the photos are enough to give me vertigo, but I'm absolutely terrible with heights.