Kalash Solstice: Winter Feasts of the Kalash of North Pakistan

The Kalash are a tribe living high in the Hindu Kush mountains of NorthWest Pakistan. They have their own religion. They are not Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. It is widely believed that their religion comes from the soldiers of Alexander the Great, who passed near their area in 327 B.C. The Solstice in English occurs twice each year, around June 20 and December 22, as the Sun reaches its most northerly or southerly excursion. The Kalash explain that they are looking at the sun every morning at sunrise time. As the Kalash live high in the mountains, the sun appears in between the high peaks each morning. Each day the sun appears at a slightly different place. The Kalash have names for each of these individual places in between the peaks. They look at the place in the mountain where the sun shines through. Each morning, the sun moves from 22 December to 20 June and then moves back. So the Kalash calculate the days and months of the year by these movements of the sun relative to the mountain peaks. This book is the most complete and detailed study ever undertaken of the Kalash people. The authors, a French couple, became so absorbed into the Kalash that they became as much as possible Kalash themselves. The woman in the partnership, Viviane Liever, even had her hair done in the Kalash way and had a black gown made in the way of Kalash women. She wore a Kalash headgear that Kalash women wear. They did this over a period of many years starting in 1976, coming to visit the Kalash valleys every one or two years with only a few gaps. Read more