The Hindu Kush

The Hindu Kush is a mountain range located in eastern and central Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan. The Eastern Hindu Kush range, also known as the High Hindu Kush range, is mostly located in northern Pakistan. Most marijuana enthusiasts who smoke Kush (weed) would have no idea about the region or the history and culture of growing cannabis and making hashish that the Hindu Kush is famous for.

The origin of the name Hindu Kush is disputed, despite it being fairly recent, first used ca 1330. As 'kush' is 'killing' in old Persian, about the same time the cannabis strain was first introduced to Europe, coincidentally Hashish has a similar etymology, as most sources state Kush means Hindu-Killer because of the vast number of Indian slaves who perished in passing its snows while being taken by Islamic invaders. Whereas, Hashish was related to "assassin". However, the word Kush could also be derived from a Persian word meaning "Hindu Throne" but no-matter how it was once known, now it's the name of the most popular marijuana in popular culture and derivatives of this hardy plant are smoked on every continent, with little regard of where, why, or how this marvelous durable strain, the great granddaddy of "white widow", came to be.

Imagine a plant that can grow in the some of the harshest environments on the planet? Geographically speaking, Kush is the westernmost extension of the Pamir Mountains, the Karakoram Range, it's a sub-range of the Himalayas. Interestingly (side note) it's calculated to be the geographic center of population of the world. The late great author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Andromeda Strain and many more best sellers) traveled through the region in the 1980's and wrote about it in his 1988 novel "Travels", describing the region as so remote that locals would line the road to see foreign tourists walk past. Undoubtedly, in more recent times the spill-over from conflict in Afghanistan has changed some of that but the production of cannabis and manufacturing of Hashish flourishes as never before, due to demand.

The mountains of the Hindu Kush system diminish in height as they stretch westward: toward the middle, near Kabul, they extend from 4,500 to 6,000 meters (14,700 feet to 19,100 feet); in the west, they attain heights of 3,500 to 4,000 meters (11,500 feet to 13,000 feet). The average altitude of the Hindu Kush is 4,500 meters (14,700 feet). The Hindu Kush system stretches about 966 kilometers (600 miles) laterally, and its median north-south measurement is about 240 kilometers (150 miles). Only about 600 kilometers (370 miles) of the Hindu Kush system is called the Hindu Kush mountains but the entire region produces some of the best marijuana and hashish in the world.