Message #84992

[Bianca]

By the river, we joined some of the other women. I took my clothes off, and amidst much curiosity and giggles,




Dancing during the Chamos festival


Gulistan poured warm water (they insisted - not even they use the freezing river water) over me in the sunshine, before helping me to put on my black & green Kalasha dress, headdress and beads. Back at the guesthouse, she braided my hair in typical Kalasha style. The transformation was, once again, complete. The next day, forty goats were sacrificed at the temple in honour of the God (they are later eaten), and the men have to purify themselves with the fresh goat's blood.

Later that day, there was a ritual cleansing ceremony in one of the temples with burning juniper branches and offerings of chapati bread. There was much singing, dancing, and chanting, and we were lucky enough to witness a baby ceremony at the bashali, the Kalasha menstruation house. In the Kalasha tradition, men are pure and women impure, and women live in the bashali for the duration of their menstruation. They also give birth there and remain there with the newborn baby for seven days. Harsh as this may sound, in practice it gives the women a rest time, as they do nothing other than enjoying themselves during their time in the bashali, and I wonder



Pensive Kalasha girl

whether this practice goes back to more ancient times, when women gathered and separated themselves from the men voluntarily during their moontime, knowing how powerful this time is for dreams, visions, etc. In fact, the Kalash women, although having a much lower status than the men (they are not allowed to go to the big temples, for example), are vibrant, vivacious, strong, confident. They seem to run the show. They are also extremely beautiful, with very striking features. I was hoping to spend my moontime with the women in the Bashali and had been granted permission to do so, but in the end, it was just too cold for me in the valley. Four days in Rumbur were more than enough - with no heating, an open-air bathroom, and logging water from the river up the stairs for a wash and the toilet. Yoga had to be done with three layers of thermals, a wooly hat, and gloves. It was a notch up in cold from Tibet. Living in Rumbur was like being in a freezer 24/7. I simply couldn't get warm, the whole group got sick, and so I left for the warmer shores of Islamabad, resolving to return



Yours truly in Kalasha outfit

in the spring for the Kalash spring (Beltane) festival.