A Day Inside One of Asia’s Most Open Tribes

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Pakistan is extremely conservative.

[00:00:02]Strict gender segregation is the norm.

[00:00:04]Women are only allowed to go outside veiled, and in general, there are endless restrictions everywhere. At least almost everywhere, because right in the middle of the Hindu Kush mountains, there is actually a tribe that not only throws wild parties, but is also remarkably open. They are the Kalash, often considered the most liberal tribe in Asia, and they have traditions that would seem wild [music] even to many people in the West. In this video, we show you what their unusual and remarkably open everyday life looks like. Before we get into the unusual lifestyle of the Kalash, let's first look at who the Kalash actually are. The Kalash are a small people of only around 4,000 to 7,000 individuals who have lived for several thousand years in three remote valleys in the Hindu Kush mountains of northern Pakistan.

[00:00:50]Originally, the Kalash probably have their roots in southeastern Europe, which would also explain why their skin and [music] hair are so noticeably lighter than those of other people in Pakistan. They also speak a language entirely of their own, and unlike 96% of the country's population, they believe in several gods. They have very little connection to the strongly Islamic culture surrounding them, and that in turn means that their daily life looks completely different from the rest of Pakistan. This becomes clear early in the morning, because when the first rays of sunlight announce the start of the day in the Kalash valleys, women come out of their houses completely unveiled to carry out tasks that in conservative cultures are normally reserved only for men. In fact, they work in the fields where they grow wheat, beans, and corn.

[00:01:37]They are also responsible for supplying their families with firewood, which they carry in heavy baskets on their backs along the steep mountain paths. On top of that, they also manage the communities' water-powered mills. The women often do this hard physical labor in large groups. They laugh and sing loudly while they work, and their clothing is just as cheerful as the Kalash women themselves. Instead of Islamic hijabs, they wear flowing dresses embroidered with bright, colorful patterns in pink, orange, and yellow. On their heads, they wear magnificent headdresses known as kupas, decorated all over with tiny shells, beads, and bells. While the women go about their work in the valley, most of the men head high up into the mountains in the morning.

[00:02:19]There, they drive huge herds of goats to their pastures, milk the animals, and make cheese. The Kalash also grow grapes, which they then turn into wine.

[00:02:28]And in Pakistan, that is already a bold thing to do, because alcohol is actually banned across the entire country. So, until the afternoon, everyday life among the Kalash for both women and men is mainly shaped by hard physical labor, because they live almost entirely from agriculture. However, when women are on their period or pregnant, they do not have to work among the Kalash. And in fact, they are not allowed to. During menstruation or pregnancy, they do not even live at home. Instead, they move with other women into so-called bashalini. These are ritual houses where they do handicrafts, chat, and recover with the other women. While the women are given a rare period of rest and recovery there, men are completely forbidden from even approaching the houses. The women in the bashalini do not have to cook, either. Instead, they are cared for by their families, who leave prepared meals outside for them.

[00:03:21]From the afternoon onward, once all the men and women who are not currently living in the bashalini are back in the village, there is no gender segregation at all among the Kalash. Over walnut bread and wine, everyone talks openly with one another. And during this time, the Kalash often begin preparing for their frequent evening celebrations. And these celebrations are truly intense.

[00:03:42]Because by the time the sun disappears behind the mountain peaks at the latest, or sometimes even already in the afternoon, the small Kalash villages come alive. Campfires are lit everywhere, and the Kalash celebrate without restraint to rhythmic drum music.

[00:04:04]Homemade wine flows freely and men and women dance, often extremely close to one another.

[00:04:10]During all of this, people also flirt very openly and the Kalash sing songs to one another that are often full of clear innuendo and hidden declarations of love. At major festivals such as the winter Chaumos festival, the celebrations become even more intense.

[00:04:25]There are so-called gender swapping rituals where men suddenly wear women's clothing and sing extremely obscene, sexually charged songs. And it is during exactly these intoxicating festivals that the things happen which make the Kalash so infamous throughout Pakistan.

[00:04:41]In fact, many couples do not stop at dancing. Instead, they use the festivals as an opportunity to become intimate with one another under the open sky with loud music playing in the background.

[00:04:52]What would be an absolute scandal in the rest of the country and would be severely punished is completely normal among the Kalash.

[00:04:59]And what may seem shocking even by Western standards is the fact that all of this does not only happen among single people. Among the Kalash, there is actually a tradition called a logging which can be translated as elopement marriage. If a Kalash woman is unhappy in her marriage or finds another man more attractive, she is legally and officially allowed to have fun with him.

[00:05:20]At one of the festivals, she can basically leave her husband overnight and simply move into the house of her new lover. However, that does not mean that the Kalash have no relationships and that [music] everyone is simply sexually active with everyone else.

[00:05:33]Instead, what is normal among the Kalash is something known as successive monogamy.

[00:05:38]This means that women are only with one man at a time, but they can change partners at any time without social condemnation. You can probably imagine how shocking this tradition must be for all other inhabitants of Pakistan for whom such free love is absolutely taboo.

[00:05:54]But the fact that the Kalash have these extremely open traditions also leads to many rumors and problems in the Islamic country.

[00:06:01]For example, there is a myth that the Kalash celebrate a ritual sex festival.

[00:06:06]Supposedly, young shepherds are sent into the mountains alone with their goats for months so they can build up massive strength there. Then when they return to the valley for the festival, they are supposedly allowed to become intimate without restraint for 24 hours with any woman [music] in the village, whether she is single or married.

[00:06:23]In reality, however, the whole thing is only a mythical historical tradition and such rights no longer exist today. But it is exactly stories like these that have [music] now led thousands of Pakistanis from the conservative Islamic rest of the country to travel to Kalash villages as tourists expecting to find some kind of exotic paradise there full of women they imagine to be freely available and uninhibited. The consequences for the Kalash are, of course, an absolute [music] nightmare.

[00:06:51]Kalash women who are simply going about their daily lives or performing their traditional dances are repeatedly approached aggressively by tourists.

[00:06:59]Harassment and assaults also happen regularly and the Kalash feel like animals in a zoo.

[00:07:05]The situation has now become so extreme that the Kalash are trying to protect themselves and put up signs saying things like do not stare or photography forbidden. The fact that the Kalash are so intensely sexualized has also led to a truly bizarre phenomenon. Prostitutes from completely different provinces of Pakistan now secretly travel to the Kalash region. They buy the people's traditional embroidered dresses and then present themselves to unsuspecting [music] tourists as real Kalash women.

[00:07:34]And while they satisfy the desires of these tourists, they also continue to damage the reputation of the Kalash even further.

[00:07:40]The Kalash really are a tribe extremely open traditions, traditions [music] that even we in the West would perceive as unusually uninhibited, and that are, of course, deeply shocking in Islamic Pakistan.

[00:07:52]The fact that women there have so many rights, that there is no gender segregation, and that they can wear whatever they want, also makes the Kalash unusual. In fact, they are one of the rare cultures in the world where women hold unusually strong social power, making them, in many ways, a matriarchal society. Write us in the comments [music] what you think of the Kalash tribe. Bye, and see you next time.