128 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya 



brought him to the top while he was still a child, 

 he had need of both. His clothes on this occasion 

 were the same as those of his following the 

 sombre-coloured though picturesque national dress, 

 a choga of homespun of the same stuff, and below, 

 baggy white pyjamas and long Bokhara boots. 

 His pony, however, was gay with the silver-plated 

 head-stall and trappings that come from Afghan 

 Turkestan. The usual salutations given and re- 

 turned, we cantered or walked, as the narrow path 

 permitted, along the side of the impetuous Chitral 

 river, past the quaint old bridge of black wooden 

 beams, to where the big tributary from the Lutkoh 

 valley mingles its blue waters with the coloured 

 stream of the main river. Our venue was at the 

 village of Singur, just beyond the junction; and 

 here, suddenly turning a corner, we found our- 

 selves in the middle of a group of some fifteen 

 or twenty men with hawks on their fists, the 

 Mehtar's falconers. Our syces were with them, 

 and took our ponies as we dismounted. 



In Chitral, among the pleasures of a pleasure- 

 loving people, hawking comes first and polo 

 second, neither of them a sport one would expect 

 to find flourishing in a country which is a labyrinth 

 of deep valleys, impassable torrents, and precipit- 

 ous mountains. The former was introduced from 

 Badakshan and the Khanates of Central Asia,- 



