Kalash (Spring) Festival

♥ Joshi/Chilimjusht: (14th - 16th May) ♥
Spring is welcomed to the valleys with girls singing and dancing on the roofs for the Kirik Pushik, the festival of the first flower blooming. In spring women are allowed to enter the restricted upper valleys, with the Siu Wajik rite, in which a girl crushes three walnuts as an offering on the boundary bridge.

The spring festival, in the middle of May lasts for four days. The spring festival honours the fairies and allso safeguards the goats and shepherds before they go to the pastures. Before the festival the women and girls gather from all over the valley and decorate their houses. Inside the houses local wine and milk products are shared . The women then sprinkle milk on Goddess “ Jestak “ the protector of their children and home. The festival begins at Rumbur where the Shaman (soothsayer) and tribal chiefs lead a procession to the “ Malosh altar” , high above Grum, to sacrifice goats to the Gods . Later the festival moves on to Bumboret and ends up at Birir , a few days later.
Joshi festival is celebrated every year at different dates in different villages.
[May 13 to 14 at Rumbor Valley]
[15 to 16 at Bumborte Valley]
[17-18 May at Birir valley]

During this festival Kalash man beat drum and their women perform folk and traditional dance, while singing songs to welcome the spring, a season of beauty and life. Boys and girls dance in semi-circles, hands on shoulders of each other.

Joshi, the main spring festival, is held in May. All the houses and the temple of the goddess Jeshtak are decorated with walnut branches and flowers, and milk is distributed to all the villagers. Dressed in new clothes, the women dance while the elder men sing songs of epic and romance. All the fairies in the hills gather, it is said, to watch the Kalasha wave walnut branches in time to the chanting of sacred Gatch (asking for abundant milk) by the religious leaderAfter this festival is announced people store milk in their barns where they keep their livestock. Those who have big flocks and milk in greater quantity, they do not start storing their milk from the first day. Those who have small flocks they start storing their milk from the first day to the tenth day. After ten days are completed women and children go to bring the yellow flowers (Bisha Push) from the pastures. These flowers bloom when no other flower blooms in the area.

The next day early in the morning these flower are put in the doors of all the houses and barns and the temple doors. All the doors of the buildings owned by Kalash are decorated with these flowers. On this same day the festival starts. Some of the songs sung in festivals have funny meanings some times they are about love. So women go from one barn to the other and collect milk for home. Every village has its own festival of the day. The rich family who can afford to make cheese, they give cheese whole the villagers. After this festival they take the goats to the higher pastures.We celebrate the arrival of spring season with new hopes and aspiration.

They celebrate the Joshi (spring) festival at the end of May each year, which they gauged by the movement of the sun. The first day of Joshi is "Milk Day", on which the Kalash offer libations of milk that have been saved for ten days prior to the festival.