Gobar
Cow dung, used across South Asia as fuel, plaster, fertiliser and in ritual.
Also: cow dung, uple, kande, gobar gas
Gobar, cow dung, has long been a household material in South Asia. It is patted into round cakes, uple or kande, dried on walls and burned as cooking fuel; mixed with mud and water, it is smeared over the floors and walls of village homes, where it dries smooth. Farmers spread it on fields as manure or compost it, and since the 1970s many have fed it into biogas plants, called gobar gas, to make fuel for cooking. In ritual, a fresh gobar wash marks a space as clean for worship, and images of Govardhan hill are shaped from dung on the day after Diwali. Dried dung is also burned as fuel in Africa, Tibet and Mongolia.