Festivals of Pakistan

The mountain north keeps a festival calendar unlike anywhere else in Pakistan, and timing a trip to land on one turns a good tour into a great one. The headline events are the rites of the Kalash, the small non-Muslim community of three valleys in Chitral, whose spring, summer and winter festivals are working religious ceremonies rather than shows staged for visitors.

Beyond the Kalash, the calendar runs from the freestyle polo tournament on the Shandur plateau in July, the highest polo ground on earth, to the harvest and Silk Road celebrations of Hunza and Gilgit in autumn, to the Persian new year of Navroz that the Ismaili communities mark each March. Each one is a window into a culture that the scenery alone can only hint at.

Most of these dates move year to year, set by lunar reckoning, sun-watching elders or provincial scheduling, so the single most useful thing we do is confirm them before you commit. The festival calendar below lays out what falls when, and the tours beneath it are timed to put you in the right valley on the right day.

The Kalash hold three festivals a year. Chilam Joshi in mid-May welcomes spring with flower rites and the year's biggest dancing; Uchal in late August gives thanks for the harvest; and Choimus, around the December solstice, is the holiest, a two-week new year rite for the god Balimain whose first week is closed to outsiders. All three happen in the valleys of Bumburet, Rumbur and Birir.

We run a dedicated Chilam Joshi tour for the spring festival, a combined Kalash festivals tour that can target any of the three, and a quieter cultural experience for travellers who would rather see the valleys without the festival crowds.

Each July the Shandur plateau, 3,700 m up between Gilgit and Chitral, hosts a polo tournament that has run since the 1930s. This is freestyle polo with almost no rules, played hard between the teams of Chitral and Gilgit-Baltistan, watched from a tented village pitched on the grass at the top of the pass. The exact dates shift each year, so we confirm them before fixing the trip; our Shandur polo tour covers the festival and the long, spectacular drive to reach it.

March brings Navroz, the Persian new year, marked across the Ismaili north. May is Chilam Joshi, the Kalash spring festival and the most visited of all. July is Shandur, the high polo tournament. August is Uchal, the Kalash harvest rite. Autumn, late September into October, is harvest and Silk Road season in Hunza, the best light of the year. December closes the calendar with Choimus, the Kalash winter solstice. We confirm each year's exact dates before you book.