On-On, Down-Down: What Putnam Missed About Hashing
Last weekend was the German Nash Hash. I wasn't there. Those things want a year's notice, and a year out I rarely know where I'll be. In November I'll be in Chiang Mai for the Thai Nash Hash instead, signed up with about six weeks' warning, which tells you most of what you need to know about how Hashing works on two different continents. Twenty years since the night this started, in Prague, in a tie and a suit, utterly confused about what I'd just agreed to.
Putnam[1], of Bowling Alone fame, gave a talk to the OECD in 2001 that's a much easier read than the book. Somewhere in the middle of it, almost as an aside, he draws a distinction that could have been written with a Hash trail in mind. Some social capital, he says, is formal: a board, a membership list, minutes someone actually takes. Some of it is barely visible at all. He singles out something as loose as a standing bar crowd that shows up on the same evening every week, no charter, nothing you could file away, and argues it generates just as much real trust and reciprocity as any formal association does. He never mentions Hashing. He didn't have to.
For anyone who's never Hashed: a “hare” lays a trail, usually in flour or chalk, sometimes deliberately wrong to keep the pack honest. Everyone runs it at their own pace, fast or slow, elite or first-timer, and it converges at the end for a Down-Down, a beer, and a song nobody outside the circle would ever admit to knowing the words to. It started in Kuala Lumpur in December 1938, when a handful of British expatriates, homesick for the “hare and hounds” paper chases of English schoolboy running, revived the tradition after work on Monday evenings, and it never really stopped. The motto, unofficial but universal, is fun, fitness, and friendship.
A night in Prague
I didn't know any of that in 2006. I was a business guy back then, tie and suit. My actual first Hash was an ordinary Monday run in Prague, and I was only there because of my girlfriend at the time. She'd been an au pair in Switzerland, where a friend of hers had introduced her to Hashing first. I genuinely could not fathom it: grown men and women, calling themselves Hashers and Harriettes, running through a forest and drinking beer in between. It made no sense to me and I loved it anyway. I went back. The second one was the Vineyard Hash, a whole weekend this time, hosted on houseboats on the Vltava, and that's where it actually landed: it wasn't really about the running. Most of the pack had lived abroad, everyone had a story that didn't quite fit their home country anymore, and somehow that was the connecting tissue. Social capital in its intercultural form, though I wouldn't have called it that for another twenty years.
Getting christened in style
For the five years after that we were drifters. No home kennel, just weekend Hashes wherever one happened to land. That changed when I settled in Austin, Texas, which I now proudly call my home Hash. I picked up a Hash name there too; well, in fact my second one, although the first one was not “deserved”. I could not really have done something “memorable” during my first event, but having laid trail for this one in Texas a few times and being around about a year, gave me the honours. It is a bit of a messy affair, but more on that later. I will, however, not type any of those names here. Look into the “who is coming” lists of any hash mentioned below, and you will get an idea. Not child-friendly is as much as I'll say. But I've carried it for twenty years now and it still reliably gets a laugh. The event and naming ceremony fell on a Super Bowl Sunday, which made it even more remarkable, memorable way to close that chapter. The friends from those years are still around. The memories are going to stick forever; while the flour eventually vanished.
Caution: not everyone is or needs to be “Hash material”
Christening still happens exactly like that, wherever I've hashed since. Flour and beer poured over your head, in front of the whole pack, whether you asked for it or not. The names themselves lean crude more often than not, mine included, and the rituals around them can be genuinely provocative if you're not in on the joke yet. Hashing doesn't apologise for any of it. Political correctness has oftentimes no place. If you take yourself too seriously, it will rub you the wrong way fast. Loosen up a little, and it starts to make a strange kind of sense.
Twenty years, a dozen countries, and counting
These days I run with the Cologne Rhine Area Pack. The abbreviation speaks for itself, and yes, it's deliberate. It covers a huge stretch of territory, which means we don't run often, or at least I am not always able to get there on time.
Hash House Harriers sits right between two other parts of this blog, with a foot in Trail Voices and another in Trail Stories. This one belongs to Trail Stories, I think, route notes and all. I introduced H3 briefly already, in the piece that opened the Trail Voices section. Since 2006, a lot has happened. So many places visited, so many voices heard, so many stories learned along the trail. I never recorded any of them.
You might not call it trail running exactly, but it gets very traily. A ballbreakers’ run can easily pass 30 kilometres with real elevation gain. The Swiss Nash Hash gave me that early in 2010. BerZuBa, spanning Bern, Zurich and Basel, gave me more of it late that same year. The Killer Hill weekend in Bergen, Norway, did the same in 2012. So did the Colorado Camp Out Hash, sitting at 4,000 metres altitude. Hash weddings are real too. I've been a guest at one, years later, at the Swiss Nash Hash, full regalia and all.
Others ran along the sea. The Riviera Hash House Harriers in France. Camp-outs on the Costa Blanca. The Algarve in Portugal. A hash weekend in Fort Lauderdale. Or the Monsoon Maelstrom H3 weekends in Goa, India, where I met Hashers from every corner of the world at once.
If flat and urban suits you better, the Bangalore Harriettes are a good place to start. I actually co-founded that kennel in 2013. Lusaka Hash House Harriers is about as flat as it gets. Vienna H3 sometimes stays entirely within the city limits.
Some people make a mission out of it, travelling all summer just to hit every national event on the calendar. GoToTheHash is a good place to start if you're curious. City name plus Hash House Harriers, typed into any search engine, usually finds the nearest kennel too.
Twenty years on, from a confused night in Prague to a home kennel in Austin to a pack named after its own punchline in Cologne, the shape has stayed remarkably consistent: no charter, no minutes, a hare, a trail, a song, and, every time, a room full of people whose stories don't quite fit anywhere else either. Bonding capital that somehow also bridges. Chiang Mai in November will be the next data point, on two fronts at once: new trail underfoot, and finally, twenty years late, a few of those stories actually written down. See you soon, maybe, in one of those crazy running circles. Or just keep this blog on speed dial. Trail Voices and Stories might just get a bit hashier.
Written by Ingo@Lozania-Lifestyle.de
[1]Putnam, R. D. (2001). Social capital: Measurement and consequences. Isuma: Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 2, 41–51.
Route notes
Where: No single trail this time. Twenty years, a dozen countries, and counting.
Find a kennel: gotothehash.net keeps the running calendar. City name plus “Hash House Harriers” in any search engine gets you there just as fast.
Worth planning around: Pan South America Hash, 20–22 Nov 2026, Montevideo, Uruguay. Hashing the Arctic, 10–17 Jul 2027, departing Longyearbyen, Svalbard. Pan Asia Hash, 5–7 Nov 2027, Hyderabad, India.
Next for me: Thai Nash Hash, Chiang Mai, this November. You can still sign up >>here