Every term in the story, defined.

The cool, milk-based drink made from ground cannabis leaves and stems, sweetened and spiced. The festive, low-THC form, consumed by millions during Holi and Maha Shivaratri who would never call themselves users.

The resin hand-rubbed from living cannabis plants and pressed into balls or sticks. The most potent and labour-intensive form, and the one historically known abroad as Nepalese hashish or temple balls. Production never stopped under prohibition; it moved deeper into the hills.

A straight, conical clay pipe used to smoke ganja or charas, typically shared. The sadhu's instrument of choice at Pashupatinath, and the image most associated with Nepali ritual smoking.

The popular name for Jhochhen Tole, a narrow lane in central Kathmandu that held around thirty licensed hashish and ganja shops at the peak of the hippie trail (c. 1967–1972). The shops closed in days when licenses were revoked in July 1973.

The dried female flower of the cannabis plant. Smoked in chillums or rolled with tobacco, it is the everyday recreational form, distinct from bhang (the drink) and charas (the resin).

Cannabis grown for industrial use (fibre, seed, oil, and grain) at low THC content (below 0.3%). The framing Nepal's provinces now use to bring the plant back into the law without touching the narcotics statute.

The formal Nepali name for the lane Westerners called Freak Street. About two hundred metres long, it was the legal-cannabis capital of Kathmandu during the hippie era.

The Great Night of Shiva, falling on the new moon of Phalguna (February–March). The one night a year when cannabis ritual at Pashupatinath is publicly tolerated, drawing hundreds of thousands of devotees and thousands of sadhus.

The 1976 Nepali statute (2033 BS) that criminalised cannabis cultivation, sale, possession, and consumption. Still the basis of Nepali drug law today, though draft legislation to regulate medical and industrial cannabis is now under discussion.

The holiest Shaivite temple in Nepal, on the Bagmati river in Kathmandu. The centre of the Maha Shivaratri celebration and of the one annual, tolerated public exception to cannabis prohibition.

A Hindu ascetic who has renounced worldly life. Ash-smeared, often dreadlocked, sadhus are the living carriers of the Shaivite cannabis tradition and the visible figures of Maha Shivaratri.

The hand-pressed, ovoid form of the highest-grade Nepalese charas: dark, soft, and aromatic. Sold by the tola on Freak Street and carried west along the hippie trail; the top grade was called Royal.

A traditional South Asian unit of mass, about 11.66 grams. The standard measure by which charas was sold on Freak Street.