Shandur Polo Festival

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Shandur invites visitors to experience a traditional polotournament which since 1936 has been held annually  in the first week of July between the teams of Chitral and Gilgit. The tournament is held onShandur Pass, the highest polo ground in the world at 3,700 meters (the pass itself is at 3,800 meters). The festival also includes Folk music, dancing and a camping village is set up. The polo tournament is featured in the first episode ofHimalaya with Michael Palin.

William and Kate invited to Shandur polo Fastivel

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Provincial Minister for Sports Syed Aqil Shah Sunday said on Sunday that Chief Minister Amir Haider Khan Hoti had formally invited the newly-wed royal couple Prince William and Princess Kate (Duke & Duchess of Cambridge) to witness the final of Shandur Polo.
The move to invite the royal couple to Shandur this year was initiated by Tourism Corporation Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (TCKP) to promote the region and to put it in the news internationally for something heart-warming and positive. Teams from Gilgit have confirmed participation in the upcoming Shandur Polo Festival scheduled for July 7- 9, 2011.

Khowar Alphabets/ Characters of Khowar (Chitrali Language)

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The Khowar alphabet is the right-to-left alphabet used for the Khowar language. It is a modification of the Persian alphabet, which is itself a derivative of the Arabic alphabet. According to the Khowar Academy with 60 letters, the Khowar alphabet is typically written in the calligraphic Nasta'liq script, whereas Arabic is more commonly in the Naskh style. Usually, bare transliterations of Khowar into Roman letters omit many phonemic elements that have no equivalent in English or other languages commonly written in the Roman alphabet. The Khowar Academy of Pakistan has developed a number of systems with specific notations to signify non-English sounds, but these can only be properly read by someone already familiar with Khowar, Persian, or Arabic for letters.