Just east of Afghanistan lies Pakistan, a region with deep cannabis heritage. The famed Hindu Kush mountains span the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and on the Pakistani side (notably in provinces like Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan), cannabis has thrived under human care. Pakistan’s history with cannabis is similar to Afghanistan’s: long-standing use for hashish and medicinal purposes, largely in rural tribal communities. In the high valleys of Chitral, Swat, and Kashmir (the part administered by Pakistan), farmers cultivated cannabis for charas (hand-rubbed hashish) for centuries. The Pakistani landraces are therefore closely related to Afghan varieties – often grouped together as “Hindu Kush strains” – but there are subtle distinctions noted by aficionados. Pakistani cannabis, especially from regions like Chitral, is known for occasionally having unique coloration (some plants develop purple hues in the cool mountain nights) and a slightly sweeter aroma. The so-called Chitrali landrace, for example, produces a lovely purple hash and has given rise to the modern Pakistan Chitral Kush cultivar, which is prized for its vivid colors and berry-like scent in addition to potent effects.
Human selection in Pakistan focused on resin content and adaptability to a rugged environment. In the scorching summers and cold winters of the Pakistani highlands, only the toughest, quickest-flowering cannabis plants thrived. Over time, a distinct subset of indica genetics formed here, sometimes labeled C. sativa subsp. indica var. pakistanica by botanists to denote a regional variant of the Afghan indica type. These plants are typically compact and stout, like their Afghan cousins, with broad leaves and thick resin. Local farmers, often members of Pashtun tribes, would allow the cannabis to grow in remote patches and harvest the sticky flowers by hand-rubbing them to make charas. This charas was (and still is) used both recreationally and in Sufi spiritual rituals in Pakistan.
Notable landrace strains from Pakistan include generic labels like Pakistani or Pakistani Kush, but the more refined cultivars carry specific names. Aside from Chitral Kush, another example is Karakoram, named after the Karakoram region. There’s also Pakistan Valley (a name used by some seed companies to denote a pure line from northern Pakistan’s valleys). These landrace cultivars from Pakistan have made their way to the West primarily through seed collectors in the late 20th century. By the 1980s, seeds from Pakistan (often simply called “Pakistani indica”) were used by breeders in the Netherlands to create heavy-hitting indica hybrids and to introduce hardiness and quick bloom traits.
Culturally, cannabis in Pakistan has remained mostly a traditional rural crop. It wasn’t a major export commodity in the way Moroccan or Afghan hashish became, partly due to Pakistan’s internal political factors. However, during the 1970s Hippie Trail era, adventurous travelers in Pakistan’s Swat Valley or near Peshawar occasionally obtained seeds and charas, spreading the legend of Pakistani strains. One particularly storied strain is Malana Cream—though Malana is actually in the Parvati Valley of India’s Himachal Pradesh, not Pakistan, it is geographically contiguous with the greater Himalayan cannabis zone that includes Pakistani territories. The Malana and related high-altitude strains demonstrate the kind of cannabis that the entire region (from Pakistan through the Indian Himalayas) is known for: resinous “charas plants” often grown among cornfields, with sticky flowers ideal for hand-rolling into hash balls.
In summary, Pakistan’s landrace strains form a key part of the cannabis co-evolution story. These strains exemplify how human cultivation in a specific geopolitical region (in this case, the Islamic societies of South-Central Asia) can preserve a lineage of cannabis with particular traits. Despite occasional government prohibition, the knowledge of how to grow and use cannabis has been passed down in Pakistan as part of folk medicine and social custom. The result is that today’s growers worldwide can still sample pure Pakistani indica genetics—short, fast, and sedative—the direct result of generations of co-evolution between Pakistani highlanders and their cherished cannabis crops.