Discover the Life of Tribes Living by Cobra Hypnosis

After being hypnotized, the poisonous and ferocious cobras became gentle, even wrong. That's what we can see when we visit the Vadi tribe in the state of Gujarat, India.

Key Facts About Tribe

The Vadi tribe has about 600 people, living nomads everywhere. At the age of 2, the children of this tribe began to come into contact with snakes and after 10 years, they would become snake experts.

In the picture is a girl of the Vadi tribe called Rekha Bae, although she is only 6 years old but she has been exposed to cobra for 4 years.

In this tribe, every child must learn to become a snake hypnotist for 10 years. Boys learn to perform with the snake and their trumpet. Meanwhile, girls are taught how to care for and nurture them.

By the age of 12, the children were able to know all about snake knowledge and would be 'graduated' from the snake hypnosis course.

Why Tribe Matters

Vadi people consider cutting the teeth of snakes to be cruel to them so they don't do it. But to reduce the danger, snakes taking part in the training process are fed a herb that makes their venom ineffective.

Getting and training snakes is illegal in Indian law, but the Vadi tribe is determined not to give up their traditional customs. Police and authorities regularly check the areas where they live. Therefore, the Vadi tribe never lived in a place for more than 6 months.

In addition, being too close to the poisonous snakes makes the Vadi tribe driven away by the townspeople when they go to buy necessities.

The members of the tribe are very attached to snakes, especially cobra. They believe that snakes never harm anyone if they don't mean to hurt him.

According to the experience of the Vadi people, they never kept a snake with them for more than 7 months. Because if not released after 7 months, cobra will be very tolerant and can be dangerous to humans.