Kalash Uchal Autumn Harvest Festival

The experience

Kalash Uchal Autumn Harvest Festival

The Kalash valleys celebrate the harvest with two days of dance, song and shared feasts under the autumn sun.

History & background

Uchal is the Kalash thanksgiving for the year's grain, fruit and grape harvest, held in late summer once the crops are in. Like Chilam Joshi, it belongs to the same ancient animist calendar that has governed Kalash religious life for over two millennia, with rituals of gratitude directed to the deities the community credits for a good season. Grape pressing for the year's wine is a central part of the celebration, a tradition tied to the valleys' distinct religious practices that set them apart from every other community in the surrounding, predominantly Muslim region. The festival's survival, largely intact, through decades of outside contact is itself remarkable, and remains one of the clearest windows anywhere in South Asia into a pre-Islamic mountain culture still practising its original customs.

Day by day

The programme

1. D1Islamabad to Chitral

   Road or flight, evening in town.

2. D2Enter Bumburet

   Harvest processions and first dances.

3. D3Rumbur & Uchal Day

   Grape pressing, feasts and the main dance ground.

4. D4Departure

   Return to Chitral and onward.