When to go & weather

Weather

Central NWFP, featuring the verdant valleys of the Swat and Indus Rivers, receives the edge of the monsoon rains in summer. The lower reaches of the valleys are hot and humid from June to mid-September. The upper valleys and mountainous north are pleasantly mild and usually dry at this time, but heavy rain can fall at any time in the mountains. Winter is bitterly cold and long in the mountains with the passes blocked by snow for months at a time.

Around Peshawar and the south, the plains and low rocky mountains are usually dry and hot (extremely so in summer) with pleasantly warm days and cold nights in winter.

Swat is shared by Pashtuns with Kohistanis (who spread to the Karakoram Highway) and the Gujars, nomadic herders who spend winter in the foothills and then drive their animals up the roads to high pastures in summer.

Chitral is a real ethnic patchwork. Indigenous Chitralis are descended from the ancient Kho, and while most are Sunni Muslims, many northerners are Ismailis, followers of the Aga Khan, including the seminomadic Wakhi in the far northeast, where the mountains blend into Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

Chitral’s best-known minority is the non-Muslim Kalasha, remnants of a much wider community that once stretched across southern Chitral and Nuristan in Afghanistan. They now live a peaceful but poverty-line existence in three valleys southwest of Chitral town.