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Harvesting and processing this prickly plant is labor intensive. In the Himalayan village of Sikles, the whole community pitches in.
Karen Brock and Kathleen Mahoney8 min read
No one in the Himalayan village of Sikles remembers a time when they didn’t spin nettle fiber. For generations, women and men have gone into the nearby forest every year to cut the tall nettle stalks, carry them back to the village, and begin the arduous and lengthy process of transforming them into fine, durable thread.
The Himalayan giant nettle, allo in Nepali, grows naturally in the Himalayan forests between 5,000 and 9,000 feet (1500 and 3000 meters), reaches a height of 5–10 feet (1.5–3 meters), and has the longest reported length for any bast fiber: 6–10 feet (2–3 meters).1 Given its 17% fiber content,2 its length, and strength, the Himalayan giant nettle plant is perfect for making textiles. Allo is also called puwa, and sisnu, which also refers to a different species of nettle, primarily used for food and medicinal purposes. The names are used interchangeably and have regional variations.
Given the fiber content, length, and strength, the Himalayan giant nettle plant is perfect for making textiles. Photo by Umesh Das
Sikles is a traditional Gurung village 6,000 feet high in central Nepal’s Annapurna range. Weavers here continue the tradition of transforming allo thread into sturdy bags called bhangre. Worn crisscrossed over the shoulders, creating a backpack effect, this everyday bag carries everything from firewood to potatoes, from cell phones to children. Few bhangres are woven entirely of allo today, but historically, they were. Now, weavers combine allo with purchased cotton, typically using cotton for the warp and allo for the weft. Women used to weave a rough cloth sewn into carrying sacks, of all sizes and shapes. The weave is very coarse, much like burlap, and they were much easier to weave than a bhangre. Plastic feed or rice sacks have now replaced those original handwoven allo bags.
A woman in the village of Sikles wears the sturdy bhangre bag. Photo by Karen Brock
In the Nepali month of Pous, mid-December to mid-January on the Roman calendar, dozens of villagers from Sikles hike two to three hours into the surrounding forest, one neighborhood at a time, to cut and gather stalks of allo. The allo harvest occurs in the winter months because the fiber quality is thought to be better at this time of year, and the effect of stinging is less due to lower temperatures. This is also the time of year that requires less work in the community’s agricultural cycle. Village members have more free time because the harvesting of rice, millet, and other staple crops is finished.
Each neighborhood within Sikles, which has about 4,000 members, manages their section of forest in the Annapurna Conservation Area in which the village is located. Each neighborhood chooses a different day or two when they will go together to the forest and harvest the allo growing in their designated area. According to Gurung custom, there's no cutting on Monday and Tuesday. If someone is ill or away during the designated cutting time, friends may share their harvest.
During December 2024, members of dozens of families from the Dhaprangthar neighborhood gathered on the edge of the village the morning of their allo harvest day. Ululation and laughter marked the designated time when everyone dashed down the road or into the forest to find the allo. Some may walk as far as 15 miles (25 kms) to find a good supply of allo. In the forest men and women work together to find areas where the giant allo is growing. Wearing thick rubber gloves to avoid possible stings, they cut the allo plant off near the base with a hasiya, the ubiquitous Nepali sickle. After each stalk is cut, the blade of the hasiya is run across the surface the length of the stalk to remove any leaves. Large piles of allo stalks accumulate throughout the day.
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The next step is to snap off the leaves at the top of the stalk and then snap the remaining stalk twice more so it’s easier to grasp the inner fiber and strip it out and away from the bark. As the ribbons of stripped allo are separated from the bark of the stalk, they are laid one on top of the other until a large enough pile forms, then they’re wound together in a loose bundle called a muta. Women tie these ribbons together at the top with a strip of thin bamboo, nigalo. These bundles are stacked inside a large bamboo carrying basket, a doko, which men and women carry strapped across their foreheads back to the village. Ten bundles of processed allo will allow a weaver to make about four bhangre.
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In the days after cutting, the whole neighborhood seems given over to the task of boiling, pounding, washing, and later, spinning allo. Whisps of smoke from fires heating cauldrons of water trail into mountain air. Steady thumps of wooden mallets pounding fiber against stone echo from one end of the village to the other. Long ropes of wet allo fiber drape over doorways, wood piles, and clotheslines.
The day after harvest, women fill a giant cauldron, sometimes a large rusty barrel, with water and set it to boil. They place alternating layers of allo bundles and ash in the cauldron. Some mix nettle with ash beforehand. Lastly, they cover the cauldron or barrel with an old allo bhangre no longer usable, one that was woven long ago when two-ply thread was used. Women keep the fire under the barrel going for four to five hours to maintain the boiling temperature the length of time the fiber needs to cook to break down and soften the fibers.
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It’s not necessary to boil the allo directly after harvest. Some women may not have the time required to process the fiber immediately so they dry the allo, hanging it in their homes until they’re ready to continue with the boiling and pounding.
After boiling, women remove the allo bundles from the cauldron or barrel to let them rest before they begin the pounding process. Using a wooden mallet, mostly women, but some men, pound the nettle on a stone or sometimes a cement block to separate remaining bark from the fiber and to soften it.
Dil Suba sits before a giant pile of allo to be pounded; harvested rice paddies are shown in the background. Photo by Umesh Das
They pound repeatedly for hours until the fibers begin to look clean and shiny, then they rinse in running water, always working near a water source, a stream, or various public water taps available throughout the village. They repeat the pound and rinse cycle two to three times, sometimes over a period of days.
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The next step is to sprinkle powdered rice hulls over the allo setting in a large bowl of water; this makes a kind of slurry. All ingredients are kneaded together, weaver Yaman Suba says, “just like washing clothes.” They know they’ve washed the allo enough when the fiber begins to have some elasticity. After the rice-hull washing, women hang the allo to dry. If the sun is shining, the allo will be dry in a day. But if it’s cloudy, they will leave it out for two to three days. When it’s completely dry, they pound it with a wooden mallet, the air filled with rice hull dust, the ground covered in soft white powder. The allo bundle is set aside to rest, before a second and final pounding, after which the fiber is much softer and fluffier. Mixing allo with rice hulls makes the thread fine and smooth, but also easier to pull apart, helping to separate the layers.
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Before spinning allo on their charkhas, women essentially pre-draft the allo fibers by looping a skein around their big toe as an anchor and then pulling lengths of fiber to separate and straighten. Next, they begin to form thread by pulling the prepared skein held under their arms, then spinning and twisting it by hand into a thin, relatively even thread. This thread will be spun on the charkha into a finer thread for weaving. Today the women in Sikles spin only singles, although in the past, they plied singles and wove bhangre with a two-ply thread. Now, they say, there’s not enough time in the day to spin this much thread. A startling aspect of the spinning process is burning off loose threads from the spun fiber on the spindle. It seems that the thread would catch fire, burning, but the deft and calm skill of the spinner prevents this from happening.
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After women have spun the yarn, they wrap it on a handmade sort of niddy-noddy with rice or millet flour, then they remove the skein from the niddy-noddy and boil it one last time. They remove it from the pot and loop the skein around a wooden dowel at each end and twist to aid in wringing out the water. Tugging at the skein, while stretched out on the dowels, helps straighten the threads. Next, women hang the thread from the dowels, even out the strands, and leave it to dry. When the allo has dried after this last flour treatment, women wind it into a large ball, ready for warping a backstrap loom. Weaving one bhangre will take 30–40 hours.
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In many Annapurna villages, weavers have stopped making their bhangres from allo, relying on purchased cotton, mostly imported from India. In other villages, women have quit weaving bhangre altogether and turn to the weavers of Sikles to purchase them. Sikles is a special, highly traditional community that continues this generations-old practice despite the time and intensity of the work involved. Gathering, preparing, and spinning the allo is a community activity, one thread in the fabric that sustains a vibrant Gurung culture.
Follow the journey from harvesting the giant nettle plants to processing the fibers into thread for weaving.
To learn more about the artisans of Sikles, Nepal, or to purchase a bhangre, write to siklesweavers@gmail.com
Lanzilao, Gabriella, Parikshit Goswami, and Richard S. Blackburn. Study of the morphological characteristics and physical properties of Himalayan giant nettle (Girardinia diversifolia L.) fibre in comparison with European nettle fibre (Urtica dioica L.) Materials Letters, Volume 181, 15 October 2016, Pages 200-203. sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167577X16310047
K, Kumaresan. (2023). Effect of Surface Chemical Treatment of Himalayan Nettle and Investigation of Surface, Physical and Mechanical Characteristics in Treated Nettle Fibre. Archives of Metallurgy and Materials. journals.pan.pl/dlibra/publication/142436/edition/127393/content
Karen Brock and Kathleen Mahoney are Peace Corps Response volunteers serving in central Nepal helping to promote sustainable tourism. They are grateful to the community members of Sikles for their kind welcome as they gathered information for this article. Special thanks to Umesh Kumar Das and Munendra Gurung for their translation assistance.
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