Nepali rural people – cultivation and use of nettle and hemp fibers

In 1979 I did a short individual trip to the rural areas south of Jumla in western Nepal. Due to the cold weather most village people stayed domestic, while uninterruptedly occupying themselves with spinning or twinning threads for clothing, sacks or fishing nets. At that time blonde blue eyed girls like me was a quite uncommon sight and I was curiously invited to stay at peoples simple houses wherever I went. Pay for cooked food was the exchange of uncooked food only. Clothing in nettle and hemp fibers was dominant, although regarded as a simple dressing in towns. Today, however, the cultivation of nettle fibers has become an increasingly growing industry in Nepal with export of supreme quality nettle cloth to western countries and Japan.