Historical Shandur Polo Festival in July this year

By Ijaz Ahmad

CHITRAL, After over two years, the annual Shandur Polo Festival will be held on its old schedule in July this year, an official of the Tourism Corporation, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has confirmed here on Saturday.

“It would be organized from July 7-9, 2018 as for a couple of years the annual three-day calendar festival could not be held from July 7 due to floods and Ramazan last year and the event was organized from July 29, however, this year, efforts have been taken to hold the event on its old schedule in July.

The TCKP, he said, has started a process to put in place the arrangements and float advertisements to attract tourists from across the world. In this regard, officials from the Gilgit-Baltistan government are likely to be invited to Peshawar to make the arrangements in order to facilitate the spectators.

The poor condition of roads leading to the venue at Shandur located in Chitral near the KP province and Gilgit-Baltistan is the major obstacle for tourists in reaching the area. Despite repeated announcements and the federal government’s decision to include Gilgit-Shandur-Chitral road in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), work on the construction of the road is yet to be started.

Shandur top, which is 3700m high, also act as a bridge between the two opponent teams of polo – Chitral and Gilgit Baltistan. Shandur annual year festival brings a great sense of contentment among the people of these districts. The festival is often embellished with cultural orientations of both teams that include their cultural dances, moment of paragliding and an essence of its folk music.

Roots of polo in Shandur are pretty deep which often leads to perplexity. Still there are two main streams towards it. Some states that the balti raja of skardu, Ali Sher Khan Anchan was the one who laid down the foundation of the king game polo in the region of Shandur. On the other hand some states that in 1935 the British occupiers were the ones who brought polo in the region of Shandur. But the matter of its history still remains unsolved.

1936 was the year when both of these rival teams came face to face to put forward the steps of their first polo tournament. The game was not been stable in another following year’s due to unpaved roads and infrastructure. Furthermore, the situation used to get worst when they had to face the calamity of floods in summers. Shandur polo ground being far away from their residencies caused them immense efforts towards the annual year festival.

In 1989 when Benazir Bhutto visited shandur polo festival as a chief guest Premier. She declared it as an international event around the world. Moreover she made a covenant to recognize it in an international world too.

Arrival of tourists in ones country brings all sort of favorable dealings and enhances its image around the globe. Every year Shandur Polo Festival bestow Pakistan with its attractive powers a huge amount of tourists. This brings a lot of business dealings with it too. In all this the beauty of place is usually been taken as granted by many, there should be proper hygienic measures around the visiting area. In order to portray ourselves morally stable and disciplined among all other nations.

“Polo is known as the game of Kings, and king of the games.” The free style polo is edged traditionally in northern areas of Pakistan. It is one of the hardest games to play, where there is no rules and regulations. Team Gilgit Baltistan had always been stronger than the team Chitral, but in recent years the performance of Gilgit Baltistan is not as such in the previous years. They claim that polo being the most expensive game demands the welfare of their horses, their own major facilities and the injuries they get through comes under the funds that are not being accountably distributed among the members of polo team. One another reasons behind  poor performance of Gilgit Baltistan is that the selection of team members is not properly organized by the selectors as compare to the team of Chitral where there is quite an accountability in selection of their team members and in provision of facilities. Thus the festival being the core part of the culture in northern areas of Pakistan should be promoted enthusiastically around the world and in all other regions of Pakistan too.