High Horses

Polo and patriotism in northern Pakistan / Sport

- Paul Gasnier

On a warm dawn last July, in Gilgit, a city in northern Pakistan, I sat in a bus packed with fans of a historic sport. “We call it ‘the game of kings, king of games,’” one passenger said.

In most other places in Pakistan, as in India, such statements are typically reserved for cricket. In the country’s northern mountains, however, polo also enjoys immense popularity. Polo competitions are held across the region, from the beginning of spring until the end of summer.

That day, I took a bumpy, nine-hour bus ride up to Shandur Pass, which cuts through the Hindu Kush mountains at an altitude of 3,700 metres above sea level. A plateau called “Shandur Top” stretches out nearby, home to a well manicured polo field—the highest in the world. The field lies between two cities: Chitral, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and Gilgit, the capital of Gilgit-Baltistan province.

In 1936, when Pakistan was still under British rule, a colonial officer held a polo tournament between teams from Chitral and Gilgit. That tournament began a tradition: the annual Shandur Polo Festival, in which various teams from both provinces face off in matches on Shandur Top, with the final game always being held between the teams of Chitral and Gilgit. When I attended the festival last summer, I saw that, in addition to being a celebration of regional tradition, the event was also a celebration of patriotism and the military. The promotion of the festival has become an integral part of the Pakistan Army’s communications strategy in this politically precarious region.