Qaqlasht festival features cultural shows, traditional games

CHITRAL: The four-day Qaqlasht festival concluded with much funfair and colourful activities at the tourist resort near Booni in Upper Chitral on Sunday.

Held at 8000 feet high tourist resort, the festival was attended a large number of people, tourists and students from different educational institutions. The festival showcased different sports competitions including polo, sports for the physically challenged persons, traditional food stalls, cultural show, tug-of-war, skate shooting, rock climbing, zip-lining marathon race, volleyball, cricket, football, archery and music night.

Games like falcon prey, hockey and other activities like buddy dik, quiz competitions, mushaira and paragliding were also organized. Local poets and artistes participated in mushaira and music programmes.

A grand music night was held last night in which the visitors and tourists were entertained with traditional dances and chorus. The spectators enjoyed music of reed instrument and that of pure Chitrali sitar besides folk dance 'chong righishi' and 'tatali wawali', and 'mamashish'.

Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP), district administration Chitral jointly organised the festival. Sarhad Rural Support Programme, cellular company Telenor, Agha Khan Rural Support Programme, tehsil municipal administration Mastuj sponsored the colourful event.

Jashan-e-Qaqlasht is 2,000 years old festival of the people of Chitral. It 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.