What Is Chyangra Cashmere? The Nepali Fibre, Explained

Search for Chyangra cashmere and you will mostly find people selling it. Very little explains what it actually is, where the word comes from, or how it differs from the cashmere in a department store. This is that explanation.

What is Chyangra?

Chyangra is the Nepali name for the mountain goat that produces cashmere in the Nepal Himalaya. Zoologically it is Capra hircus laniger — the same species called Changthangi in Ladakh, across the border in India, where the breed is generally held to have originated on the Changthang plateau.

So Chyangra is not a different animal from Changthangi. It is the same goat, named in a different language, living on the Nepali side of the same mountain system. In Nepal the herds are concentrated in the high districts — Mustang and Dolpo above all.

One point of confusion worth clearing immediately: pashmina is not a different fibre from cashmere. Pashmina is the Persian-derived word (pashm, wool) used across Nepal, Kashmir and northern India for the same soft undercoat that English calls cashmere. A shawl sold as pashmina and a sweater sold as cashmere can come from the same goat. We wrote about that distinction in more detail in What Is Real Pashmina?

Why altitude is the whole story

A cashmere goat does not grow fine fibre because of its breeding alone. It grows fine fibre because it is cold.

The undercoat is a thermal response. Through the Himalayan winter, at elevations where the air is thin and night temperatures fall far below freezing, the goat grows a dense underlayer beneath its coarse outer hair. The colder and drier the winter, the finer and denser that underlayer tends to be. Chyangra herds graze above roughly 3,000 metres, and in the higher pastures of Upper Mustang and Dolpo considerably above that.

This is also why the fibre cannot simply be farmed somewhere convenient. Move the same goat to a mild climate and it stops producing the coat that makes it valuable.

How fine is it, actually?

Fibre diameter is measured in microns — thousandths of a millimetre. Lower is finer, and finer is what separates cashmere that feels like water from cashmere that scratches.

The most useful figure we know of comes from a study published in the Journal of Nepal Agricultural Research Council, which measured the qualitative characteristics of Chyangra cashmere in Nepal and reported a mean fibre diameter of 15.36 ± 0.19 microns, with individual samples falling roughly between 13 and 16 microns.

For context, cashmere from the large Chinese and Mongolian herds is commonly cited in the 14.5 to 16.5 micron range. Chyangra sits inside that band rather than dramatically below it. Anyone telling you Nepali cashmere is categorically finer than all other cashmere is overselling. What is fair to say is that it is among the finest, and that the herds are small.

Our own yarn is spun at approximately 16 microns. We publish that number rather than a marketing adjective because it is checkable, and because a brand that will not tell you its micron count is usually not telling you something.

Combed, not sheared

This is the part most people get wrong, and it is the difference between cashmere and wool as a category.

Sheep are sheared: the whole fleece comes off with clippers. Cashmere goats are combed. In spring, as the animal begins to moult naturally, a herder works through the coat by hand with a comb, drawing out the loose undercoat while leaving the coarse guard hair on the animal. It takes a long time per goat and it cannot be mechanised at altitude.

What comes off the comb is not yet usable. It is a mixture of fine down and coarse outer hair, and the outer hair is enormously thicker — on the order of 75 microns, roughly five times the diameter of the down. Separating the two is called dehairing, and it is where a great deal of the raw weight disappears. Cashmere that has been carelessly dehaired is the usual reason a "100% cashmere" garment prickles.

How much does one goat give?

Very little. The Nepali study cites a yield in the region of 80 to 170 grams of cashmere per goat per year, before dehairing removes the guard hair. Our own working figure is around 150 grams of usable fibre annually.

That number is the reason cashmere costs what it does, and it is worth sitting with. A lightweight sweater takes the yearly yield of two or three animals. A heavy four-ply crewneck takes considerably more. There is no version of this fibre that is abundant.

We went into the economics at length in Why Is Cashmere So Expensive?

Chyangra, Mongolian, Inner Mongolian: what actually differs

Origin	Typical diameter	Scale	Character
Chyangra — Nepal Himalaya	~13–16 µm	Small herds, hand-combed	Fine and soft; supply is limited and largely artisanal
Inner Mongolia, China	~14.5–16.5 µm	The largest supply in the world	Consistent, industrially graded, very wide quality span
Mongolia	~14.5–16.5 µm	Large, increasingly industrial	Comparable fineness; much of it processed in China

The honest summary: origin alone does not determine quality. A well-graded Inner Mongolian yarn will outperform a poorly dehaired Nepali one every time. What origin tells you is the supply chain — how many hands, how far the fibre travelled, whether anyone can name the workshop.

How to check what you are actually buying

Four questions worth asking any seller, in order of how quickly they separate the serious from the rest:

1. What is the micron count? A brand that knows will say. A brand that says "the finest available" does not know or will not tell you.
2. How many ply, and at what gauge? Two-ply at 12-gauge is a real specification. "Luxuriously thick" is not.
3. Where was it knitted, not just where was the fibre from? These are frequently different countries, and the answer is often deliberately vague.
4. What does it weigh? Weight in grams is the fastest proxy for how much fibre is actually in the garment.

If you want the physical tests rather than the questions, we set out seven of them in How to Tell If Cashmere Is Real.

Where Lumusae fits

Our cashmere is Chyangra, hand-combed in the Nepal Himalaya and made up in our own workshop in Kathmandu — knitwear hand-knitted and hand-linked, shawls loom-woven. The yarn runs at approximately 16 microns, two-ply, mostly at 12-gauge.

Part of our range is left undyed, in the fibre's natural greys, oatmeals and browns — that line exists because dyeing is the single most water- and chemical-intensive step in making a garment, and because the natural colours are genuinely beautiful. The rest of the range is dyed. We are specific about which is which rather than implying the whole collection is undyed, and you can read the reasoning in Why We Make Undyed Cashmere.

Common questions

Is Chyangra cashmere better than Mongolian cashmere?

Not categorically. Measured fineness overlaps closely — Chyangra averages around 15.4 microns in published Nepali research, Chinese and Mongolian cashmere is commonly cited at 14.5 to 16.5. What differs is scale and traceability rather than the fibre itself.

Is Chyangra the same as pashmina?

Effectively, yes. Chyangra is the goat; pashmina is the regional word for the fibre it produces. Both are cashmere. In Nepal, "pashmina" is most often used for woven shawls and "cashmere" for knitwear, but that is convention, not a material difference.

Are the goats harmed?

Combing is not shearing. The undercoat is drawn out by hand during the natural spring moult, which is when the animal is shedding it anyway. The welfare questions worth asking are about grazing pressure and herd management rather than the harvest itself, and we cover them in Is Cashmere Ethical?

Why is there so little Chyangra cashmere?

Because the herds are small, the terrain is difficult, the harvest is annual and manual, and each animal produces well under 200 grams before dehairing. Supply is bounded by geography in a way that no amount of demand changes.

Does undyed mean untreated?

It means no dye was applied and no bleaching was used — the colour is the goat's own. The fibre is still washed, dehaired and spun. Undyed is a claim about colour, not a claim that nothing was done to the fibre.

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Source for the fibre measurements cited above: “Qualitative characteristics of cashmere fiber of Chyangra goat of Nepal”, Journal of Nepal Agricultural Research Council. Diameter and yield figures for cashmere from other origins are widely reported industry ranges rather than a single study.