[6][7][8] Blakey estimates he travelled roughly 40,000 miles on his 1964 Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike through Central and South Asia in the 1980s, gathering marijuana strains from local breeders and families in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma and Bhutan.
[11] Blakey spent a considerable amount of time travelling around Asia during the 1980s and estimates that he covered close to 40,000 miles on his 1964 Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike, where he collected cannabis seeds of local landrace strains[7] between 1982 and 1986.
Shantibaba moved to Amsterdam in 1988 where he became an integral contributor to the "coffee shop" scene with a knack for producing high quality charas from his extensive seed collection.
At this point in time, Blakey took all of his mother and father plants, and teamed up with his friend and international drug smuggler, Howard Marks to create Mr. Nice Seedbank.
[16] With the help of Neville Schoenmakers, Shantibaba decided to change the names of many strains that had brought him fame, in order to distinguish the original genetics from other companies claiming to still breed them.
[19] in 2000, Blakey moved to Switzerland and set up large grows[20] where he became the first person to cultivate strains of cannabis with high levels of cannabidiol (CBD) for commercial purposes.