“Hello sir!“ the young Kalash woman greeted me friendly.
I almost got a heart attack!
I had grown so accustomed to the total separation of the sexes in public in the mountain regions of Pakistan, there were areas where you saw hardly any women in the streets, men were even doing the shopping for groceries, that when I suddenly met this young woman in her colorful costume on a mountain path I intended to walk past her without looking at her, like I had learned before.
When I was right beside her she greeted me, looking me directly in the eyes and smiled.
She was rather surprised that I seemed so distant.
I think she was hoping for some friendly chit-chat with a foreigner, but at that moment I was so overwhelmed and puzzled by this sudden culture shock that I just kept walking, flee Fleance flee! 😅
I had found a world so different from the other mountain regions I had visited so far.
The Kalash are a very special people. They are Pakistan´s smallest ethnoreligious community, numbering in the few thousand only and their unique faith, called animistic by some scientists, ancient hinduistic by others, has brought some serious attacks by their hardcore Muslim neighbors, especially the Taliban, upon them over the years, at one time reducing them to a mere 2000 people.
Luckily the Pakistani government decided to step up the military presence in the Kalash region, leading to a decrease in Taliban attacks and the Kalash population recovered to about 4000.
In 1992 there was still the claim that the Kalash were descendents of the soldiers of Alexander the Great, which would explain the lots of blonde hair and blue eyes you see there, but it seems that genetics has debunked that myth now.
Drumming is men´s business in Kalash society
As luck would have it, I was there during one of their main festivals in spring time, with mad drums, flutes and lots of very special high pitched female singing, dancing, and dancing Kalash style meant women and men joining together in dance.
They have many customs, which are so different from those of their Muslim neighbors, that often they are very offensive to orthodox Muslims, who consider them Kafir, unbelievers, pagans, not people of the book, and similar to the campaigns against the Yazidis, who are fire worshippers, in Shingal, the latest one by the hordes of Daesh, radical Muslims have been trying to either convert the Kalash or eradicate them for centuries.
But somehow these happy-go-lucky hobbits straight outta Shangrila survived.
They´re kinda like the eco hippies of Pakistan, music, dance, love, peace and mulberries.
In the Kalash valleys I met Sean, an English guy who had just finished film school in London and was carrying lots of photo and sound equipment, having a field day during this kaleidoscope of colours of greeting spring. He recorded the weird and wonderful singing, filled roll after roll with beautiful pictures and we all recharged our souls which had been deprived of the femine after weeks in the harsh mountains of patriarchy.
The women in their colorful costumes, adorned with Cowrie shells, wonder where they did get them from, witnesses of ancient trade relationships I guess, the men with their feather hats, peacock style, 1992 was still a peaceful time in Kalash territory, but shortly afterwards the terror of the Taliban in Chitral, Swat and other places would start.
In recent times efforts have been made to protect and support Kalash culture and language, like in this video.
I don´t know why, probably because of their shared love of music and dance and the interaction between men and women, but the Kalash very much remind me of the Kurds in the Middle East.
Both are amicable people but unfortunately their neighbors don´t want to let them live their lives on their own terms.
This video shows a bit more of the life of the Kalash people.
The opening scene alone is typical for this region.
Who else but a guy with a Kalashnikow could do the honours? 😉
Since I took no camera with me on my journey, I have no pictures of my own to show you the Kalash colours, but because of those wonderful internet times of ours, everything is just a mouse click away.
Watching the videos, deciding which pictures to show, brought back many sweet memories, I actually cried a lot while writing this article.
Just thinking about this wonderful people being under attack from religious zealots drives me mad.
And the Kalash are not the only one in danger.
The world is still full of wonderful indigenous people who have so much to give to the world, their knowledge, their customs and traditions, their myths and stories, their lovely ways with nature, but we are in danger of losing them.
Nowadays there are people in many countries trying to help those people.
Helping them, protecting them, preserving their cultural heritage must not mean putting them in a zoo or in a museum though, that would just be another form of cultural imperialism.
I hope that countries like Pakistan, with indigenous people, find the love and the strength to let those people develop on their own terms, embracing progress but at the same time also preserving their heritage.
Since this has now become a serious series of even more serious travelling,
check out the last part too.
There you will also find a link to the previous parts.
