Kaghlasht Festival concludes after four days

BOONI: The Kaghlasht festival concluded after four days of festivities showcasing Chitral’s traditional games and sports on Sunday.

On the last day, the final of match football was played between the Bronners Club, Peshawar and Booni Headquarters and the former won by two goals.

The Booni Headquarters Club defeated Mroi Club and won the trophy in a thrilling final match of volleyball while Charoon Oveer clinched the trophy in the final match of traditional game Shapirkeli.

A group of motorcyclists from Islamabad exhibited feats of climbing the mountainous slopes and received applause from the spectators.

Held at 8,000 feet high tourist resort, the visitors also enjoyed music of reed instrument and that of pure Chitrali sitar besides folk dance ‘chong righishi’,  ‘tatali wawali’ and ‘mamashish’.

The organizers had established a tent village to facilitate the tourists besides setting up food and cultural stalls for tourists. A record number of teams participated in various games.

Jashan-e-Qaqlasht is 2,000 years old festival of the people of Chitral. The festival is organized with the objective to protect the indigenous Kho culture and to highlight and market it as tourism product so as to attract maximum national and international tourists to the region that could help reduce poverty by providing tourism-related job opportunities to the locals apart from promoting cross-cultural understanding and harmony.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Deputy Speaker Suriya Bibi was chief guest on the occasion who distributed trophies and awards to players of different games along with the DCs of Upper and Lower Chitral.

The festival started on May 2 after being delayed due to rain.  The popular traditional festival could not be held due to Covid and advent of Ramazan in April in which it is held. It was last held in 2019. 

There was also the increasing interference by the local administration in the holding of the festival. The Kaghlasht committee in the past had also expressed its annoyance and reservation over the interference of the district administration in it.