Footage by Frances Garrett (2001)

While many Tibetan medical materials (materia medica) come from Tibet, there are essential ingredients that are not native to the Plateau. They must be imported from Nepal, India, and beyond. This video looks at the warehouse of a Tibetan medicine factory, which stores medicinal plants and other ingredients, including cardamom from as far as Guatemala.

Sourcing materia medica is probably the biggest challenge of industrial production. Despite state subsidies and efforts by many of the factories, only a handful of medicinal plants are successfully cultivated on the Tibetan Plateau, and most of these ingredients are harvested in the wild.