Kalash Valley

The drums start in the evening and the women dance in bright embroidered dresses, their headdresses heavy with cowrie shells and red beads, and the mulberry wine is passed from hand to hand without ceremony. The dead rest in open wooden coffins on the hillside above the village, exposed to sky and weather, and nobody finds this strange. In the Kalash valleys of Chitral, life follows rhythms that predate Islam in Pakistan by millennia.

The Kalash people are a community of roughly 4,000 living in three valleys — Bumburet, Rumbur, and Birir — in the Chitral district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. They practise an ancient animist religion with elements scholars have linked to pre-Vedic traditions, making them one of the last non-Muslim indigenous communities in Pakistan. Their festivals — Chilam Joshi in spring, Uchal in autumn, and Chaumos at the winter solstice — involve communal dancing, singing, and the open consumption of home-brewed mulberry wine, a sight found almost nowhere else in the country. The valleys themselves are steep and green, terraced with walnut and mulberry orchards. Above-ground burial in carved wooden coffins is the traditional Kalash practice, visible on hillsides throughout the valleys. Chitrali pulao with walnuts and dried fruit, fresh goat cheese on flatbread, and mulberry wine define the valley's food culture.