The Kalasha is a pagan civilisation that has lived in the area for at least 2,000 years but is coming under threat from an increasingly militant version of Islam and modernisation.
The women wear long black dresses with vividly coloured embroidery and have hair in long plaits and magnificent headdresses decorated with shells. Garish belts and layers of brightly coloured necklaces add to their exotic appearance.

On their cheeks are painted dots and tattoos. With improbable pale skin and piercing light eyes, any one of a dozen girls could be on the cover of National Geographic.

These are a people who love drinking wine and can freely choose their husband or wife. The women make no attempt to hide their faces and dance with gaiety in public, a sight now so rare in increasingly conservative Pakistan that it is shocking for most of their countrymen.

The Kalasha women greet familiar men and women with three kisses on the cheek (left, right, left), and then they kiss each other’s hands, sometimes both hands.

Muslim tourists from other parts of Pakistan, typically groups of men, are bewildered by the Kalasha festivities, seemingly unable to fathom that this too is a religion. It seems that it is tales of the Kalasha women that have brought them here, confusing the women’s free will for free love.'

In Pakistan, ancient pagan culture struggles to survive encroaching Islam