Shandur Polo Festival Tour

Trip highlights

• The final, on the last afternoon

  Gilgit against Chitral on a 3,743 metre pitch, played to rules that predate the ones the rest of the world uses, in front of a crowd on the grass banks with no barrier between them and the horses.

• Three nights camped on the pass

  Most visitors drive up for the day from Gilgit and drive back down. Staying means the early morning matches, the horse lines at dawn, and the sky at 3,700 metres with nothing anywhere near it.

• Two nights in the Kalash valleys

  Rumbur or Bumburet on the way in, depending on where there is room during festival week — both the best acclimatisation available and a reason to be in Chitral anyway.

• The drive over from Chitral

  The Mastuj road, the Shandur lakes, and the moment the tented city comes into view on a pass that is otherwise empty grass and water.

At a glance

• 10 days, fixed to the festivalDates move with the festival, which is set each spring for the first week of July.
• Shandur Pass, 3,743 mThe highest polo ground in the world, and the highest you sleep on this trip.
• Three nights under canvasThere is no building at Shandur. Full-service camping, two to a tent.
• In via Chitral and the Kalash valleysThe long way round, and the reason you are not ill when you get there.
• Both final days at the groundFreestyle matches through the week, the Gilgit–Chitral final at the end.
• Hotels either endIslamabad, Chitral, Gilgit and Naran in hotels. Shandur in tents.
• July onlyThe pass is under snow from November and the festival is the one week it fills.

Day by day

1. 1Day 1Arrive Islamabad

   Met at the airport and driven to the hotel. A briefing over dinner: where the festival is, what camping at 3,700 metres involves, and what to put in the bag that goes on the jeep rather than the one that stays in Islamabad.

2. 2Day 2Fly to Chitral

   

   The hour-long flight over the Lowari, with Tirich Mir — 7,708 metres, the highest mountain in the Hindu Kush — filling the window on a clear morning. It is a small aircraft on a visual approach and it cancels in cloud; if it does we drive through the Lowari tunnel instead, which is seven hours and no hardship. Afternoon in Chitral: the fort, the bazaar and the polo ground in town, which is where the Chitral side trains.

3. 3Day 3Chitral to the Kalash valleys

   

   Two hours by jeep up a side valley into Rumbur or Bumburet — the Kalash valleys, home to the last of the Kalasha, who are not Muslim, speak their own language and have kept a calendar of festivals that has nothing to do with anyone else's. You are not here for a Kalash festival this week, and we say so plainly: you are here because it is a remarkable place and because two nights at 2,000 metres is what makes Shandur comfortable later.

4. 4Day 4A day in the valleys

   

   On foot between the villages — Balanguru, Grom, the terraced fields and the carved wooden houses stacked up the hillside. Time with a Kalasha family who host visitors, which is arranged in advance and paid for properly. An easy day by design; you gain height tomorrow.

5. 5Day 5Over the Shandur Pass to the festival ground — 3,743 m

   

   The long day: back down to Chitral, up the Mastuj road along the Yarkhun river, and then the climb onto Shandur. Six to seven hours in total on a road that is tarmac, then gravel, then not much. The pass opens out into grass and two lakes, and in festival week into a tented city with horse lines, food stalls and several thousand people. Our camp is pitched and waiting. The first afternoon is for doing nothing while you get used to the altitude.

6. 6Day 6Festival day — the group matches

   

   Polo from the morning: the smaller teams, the freestyle matches, the junior sides. Between games there is everything else the festival has become — the horse lines, the folk music, the Chitrali dancing in the evening. Watching from the bank on the north side puts the mountains behind the pitch, which is where the photographs are.

7. 7Day 7Festival day — Gilgit against Chitral

   

   The final. Two teams, six a side, two chukkas of twenty-five minutes with no substitutions, so a man who comes off stays off. The ball is played from where it lies. The crowd is close enough to the boards to feel the ground go. Whichever way it ends, the losing valley has a year to think about it. The evening is the closing ceremony, and then the camp.

8. 8Day 8Shandur to Gilgit

   

   Down the eastern side through Phander and its lake, the Ghizer valley and the Gilgit river, six hours of the best road in the country to drive and one of the least driven. Gilgit for the night, and a hotel room after three under canvas.

9. 9Day 9Gilgit to Naran, or fly to Islamabad

   Two ways home and we take whichever the weather gives us. The flight from Gilgit to Islamabad is fifty minutes and spectacular and frequently cancelled. The road is the Karakoram Highway down the Indus gorge past Nanga Parbat to Naran, which is a full day and a fine one. Either way you are in a hotel that night.

10. 10Day 10Islamabad and onward

    Into Islamabad by late morning if you drove, with a day room at the hotel and time for Faisal Mosque or the Saidpur village lanes before an evening flight.

Good to know

**The dates are not ours to set**

The Shandur Polo Festival is fixed each spring by the Gilgit-Baltistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa administrations, and it lands in the first week of July. The exact days are usually announced two to three months out. We hold the shape of this itinerary and confirm the dates as soon as they are published, which means booking flights before the announcement carries a risk — ask us before you do.

**Camping at 3,700 metres**

There is no accommodation on the pass. None. Everybody camps, including the teams. Our camp has two-person tents with mattresses, a mess tent, our own kitchen and a crew who stay with it. July days on the pass are warm in the sun and the nights go close to freezing. A sleeping bag rated to 0 °C is the single most useful thing in your bag, and there is nowhere to buy one after Chitral.

Altitude is the reason this trip goes the long way round. Shandur at 3,743 metres is high enough to give an unacclimatised person a bad night, and the common mistake is to drive up from Gilgit at 1,500 metres in a morning. Our route has you sleeping at 1,500, then 2,000, then 2,000 again before the pass, which is what a comfortable festival looks like.

**What the polo is actually like**

Free-style polo, the pre-modern game: six a side, two chukkas of twenty-five minutes, no substitutions and almost no stoppages. A player who scores may take the ball from the halfway line and ride it in himself. It is fast, it is rough, and the horses are the valley's own rather than imported ponies. If you have watched polo on a lawn in England, this is a different sport with the same name.

**Getting to Chitral**

The flight is one hour and it is the good way. It is also a visual approach in a small aircraft and it cancels whenever the cloud is in, sometimes for days in a row during monsoon. We build the road option into the plan rather than treating it as a failure: through the Lowari tunnel, seven hours, and a good drive in its own right.

**Photography**

Bring more battery than you think and something longer than a phone. The light on the pass is hard and clean, the action is fast, and there is no power at Shandur beyond what our solar panels put out. Ask before photographing people closely, particularly in the Kalash valleys, where the answer is often yes and being asked matters.

Questions about this trip

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