This article was first published by our friends at The International Ecotourism Society, who have agreed to its republication here. View the original article on their Your Travel Choice blog.
Chitral, in the extreme north of Pakistan, is home to 40,000 people settled in more than 300 small villages boasting great cultural and natural diversity. These villages offer unique opportunities by highlighting indigenous arts, crafts and music, traditional sports, cuisine and the fascinating local way of life.
A mountain view in the Chitral valley of northern Pakistan
The Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism (CAMAT) has been promoting community-based, culturally rooted and environmentally friendly tourism in Chitral for the last one and a half decades. Recently, CAMAT implemented a UNESCO community-tourism project to promote peace through sustainable economic development by engaging a wide array of stakeholders including music and dance troupes, local sport associations, student organizations and national and regional NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
For ecotourism to thrive in Chitral, innovative approaches are needed to protect and utilise traditional cultures and the environment as tourism products. CAMAT thus works to revive age-old traditions by supporting them with new technologies that help create income-generating activities for the locals while at the same time protecting local heritage.
The traditional cultures of the Chitral region are replete with beautiful music, folk songs and dances, and time-honoured values that reflect the friendly hospitality of the peoples. Here are a few examples:
Kalash Villages
The Kalash communities in southern Chitral live in the valleys of Bumborate, Birir and Rumbor. Their cultural and religious traditions are strikingly different from those of the surrounding communities and have sparked interest among many visitors and researchers. Their annual festivals featuring traditional dances and devotional songs are expressions of spiritual inspiration.
Kalash women
The profits from tourism in the Kalash areas have largely ‘leaked’ to outside entrepreneurs that invest in tourism development in these destinations and control most of the tourism-related businesses. It has been CAMAT’s priority, therefore, to encourage visitors to patronise Kalash-owned and -operated local businesses in order to retain tourist spending within the community. Another challenge facing the Kalash villages is environmental degradation, such as soil erosion and flooding. Natural attractions are essential to sound tourism development and to the preservation of the Kalash way of life.
Wakhi Villages
The Wakhi community in Broghil (a high mountain pass) lives in northern Chitral, along the border of Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor. They speak a dialect called Wakhi and are known for their traditional coats prepared from raw goat skin skilfully stitched together. The Wakhi economy mainly consists of livestock trade. Yak, the long-haired wild ox of the mountains of Central Asia), for instance, is sold in the summer, to be stored as food for the six long months of winter, when the villages are cut off from the rest of the world by deep snow.
Yak polo is one of the most famous events of the Wakhi community in the Broghil, located in the Pamir region of northern Pakistan
Yak polo is the traditional sport of the Wakhi community, and played during the Broghil annual festival in July. The women in the Wakhi community are skilled artisans who produce a variety of handicrafts, ranging from colourful hand-knitted sweaters and gloves to embroidered caps. They also prepare special woollen clothing to keep warm in the harshest of winters.
Khow Villages
The Khow people are settled in different valleys and side valleys, and form the majority in the Chitral region. Their cultural traditions are characteristically non-violent and moderate, without any custom of displaying arms. The Khow community also has large and small festivals throughout the seasons, attracting participants from both within and outside the local areas.
Although the local folk singers and folk dancers preserve the forgotten musical heritage of the Khow people, under the modern governance in Pakistan, the efforts to preserve the Khow cultural traditions have largely been neglected. CAMAT and our partners help facilitate the revitalization of traditional music and sports of the Khow villages in order to promote a peaceful atmosphere where modern-day tourism can thrive alongside indigenous cultures.
*
Tourism can help protect the natural environment and traditional cultures. For the Chitral communities, tourism can be an effective tool for sustainable economic development that reduces pressure on natural resources by diversifying income-earning opportunities and creating employment beyond farm-based jobs. Tourism also plays a central role in transferring skills and know-how to the host communities.
In recent years, tourism development in Chitral has mostly halted due to various security threats discouraging travellers from visiting Pakistan. However, CAMAT and other local organizations’ efforts to promote sustainable community tourism have not slowed, determined to strengthen tourism not only as a vital source of much-needed income-generating activities, but also as an effective means to promote tolerance, peace and cultural understanding.
More Information
To learn more about the Chitral Association for Mountain Area Tourism, contact Shams Uddin, Manager: +92 943 413540, camatchitral@yahoo.com.
More information about CAMAT can be found in the entry (Tourism versus Terrorism) it submitted to the Geotourism Challenge 2009, a National Geographic initiative in partnership with whl.travel. Although CAMAT did not reach the finals, the merit of its project is unimpeachable.
This one is really a great article! Slow... 
I guess you can rewrite the famous quote of the... 
We welcome the movement toward slow! And for those... 
What a great montage! It’s good to see the... 
I agree with Slavica, Teamworkz...
I think its great some positive tourism stories coming from a country (and others) like Pakistan…keep up the great work…
Its nice blog about such a nice villages of Pakistan which is very suitable to make tour like Chitral, Kalash, Wakhi, Khow villages.
Chitral is well known as having natural beauti in northern areas and people love to visit Chitral and villages with Chitral like Khow, Wakhi, Kalash Villages are show the nature and you shared informative post about that nice places.