Gyuma (ग्युमा)

The Nepali gyuma covers two distinct traditions according to the community that prepares it, gathered under a single name without, for all that, constituting a single product.

Among the Sherpa, the Tamang and the peoples of the high valleys (Manang, Mustang, Dolpo), the gyuma is identical to the Tibetan gyurma described in the East Asia section: yak’s blood, tsampa (roasted barley flour), fat and yak casing. These communities of Tibetan descent, Buddhist and Tibeto-Burman-speaking, share with Tibet a common culinary base, with the gyuma as its southern extension beyond the Himalaya. It accompanies the ceremonies of the Buddhist calendar, foremost among which is Losar, the Tibetan New Year.

Among the Limbu and the Rai, the Kirati peoples of the eastern hills of Nepal, the gyuma is a distinct product associated with another cultural area. The Kirati are not Tibetan Buddhists but follow the Kirat Mundhum, an indigenous religion tinged with Hindu and Buddhist influences that varies by region. Their gyuma is prepared with pig’s blood, chopped offal, rice, and a single ingredient that defines its signature: the yangben.

The yangben (Everniastrum cirrhatum) is a filamentous lichen that grows on the old chestnut trees and the rhododendrons of the forests of the eastern hills. It is gathered, then boiled in water with ash to remove bitterness and undesirable compounds, before being incorporated into the preparation. In the filling, it absorbs the fat and brings an earthy, faintly smoky flavour, one of the recognisable marks of Limbu cooking.

The timur (Zanthoxylum armatum), a Nepali pepper in the Sichuan pepper family, is the characteristic spice of the Kirati version. It produces the same citrus-numbing sensation as Sichuan huājiāo, with a more citrusy and less camphorous aromatic profile.

The simultaneous presence of these two traditions in Nepal owes in part to recent history. The high valleys of the north have always shared with Tibet a common culinary base, fed by the trans-Himalayan trade that carried salt, wool and barley through passes above five thousand metres. The entry of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army into Tibet in 1950, then the progressive closure of the border and the arrival in Nepal of Tibetan refugees from 1959, reconfigured this geography. Nepal and the Himalayan regions under Indian sovereignty (Ladakh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh) became places for the preservation of the Tibetan tradition, in forms sometimes better preserved than in central Tibet itself, which was transformed by the Cultural Revolution and then by the sinicisation of recent decades. The Kirati gyuma follows an independent trajectory, long anchored in the eastern hills.