Kalash community celebrate ‘Phool festival’ in #Chitral

Kalash community celebrate ‘Phool festival’ in Chitral

By Gul Hamaad Farooqi

CHITRAL: Kalash community celebrated its annual colorful Kalash Phool Festival with traditional zeal and fervor. The festival marks the reaping of grapes & walnuts harvests. 

Phool festival is one of the four festivals celebrated every year by the community. People of the community adorn their heads with flower, sing songs in the local language and perform traditional dances throughout the two-day festival.

Elderly women  preparing traditional caps decorated with flowers  and put these colorful caps on the head of those young girls who reach to the age of 10 years whereas men and youngsters fully take part in the celebrations. After wearing caps made from roses and flowers these youngest girls also participate in traditional dance and elder women train them.

Tourists from across the country flock to the region to celebrate the festival. Organizing such kinds of festival aimed at to attract more tourists to the scenic valley as tourism is the only source of income for most of population of Chitral. At morning Kalash people dancing at lower dance house and their religious leaders called Qazi singing song while women keeping notes of rupees 50, 100, 500 and 1000 in their caps to decorate it with money and it consider their dignity.

In afternoon a boy took flowered cap from the head of a small girl and thorough to an other one who pick it and run to the upper dancing place where Kalash people move and dancing together. Some girls from Islamabad and other cities also participated in this dance and enthralled the spectators

However, locals complained that dilapidated roads are the biggest problems in the region keeping the tourists away to visit the area. “The people from all ovear Pakistan want to visit Kalash valley to witness its festival but broken roads keep them away,” said Saifullah, a local resident

The federal government has promised to construct the road leading to Bamborat and Rambor and locals hoped that tourists from all over the world will get the chance to witness the festivities if the government addresses the problems being faced by the people living in the region.

Tourists from China, USA, Scotland, UK and other countries also participated in the festival.