The story
Chilam Joshi Festival in Kalash Valleys
Chilam Joshi is the Kalash people's spring festival, celebrated each May across the three Kalash valleys of Rumbur, Bumburet, and Birir in Chitral. Over four days, Kalash communities mark the abundance of fresh milk and new crops with communal libations, circle dances, and courtship rituals rooted in an agrarian, non-Muslim minority culture.
In the three narrow valleys of Rumbur, Bumburet, and Birir, tucked into the mountains of Chitral in Pakistan's northwest, lives a community of a few thousand people who follow a religion and way of life found nowhere else in the country.