wear baggy shalwar and qameez with a typical rolled woolen cap called pattu. A long coat or blanket is worn in winter. Women wear bright clothes: a long shirt over baggy trousers and an embroidered hat, over which they drape a shawl. They do not observe veil and work as equals in fields and homes. Hunzakuts get a little time for entertainment as they spend more time at work. Nevertheless, they celebrate many festivals of harvesting and sowing. They like to sing and dance at weddings. Their local orchestra consists of a big drum, kettle drums and pipes.
Hunzakuts are simple and contented. They still believe in fairies and supernatural powers. Their folk tales and songs are based on accounts of fairies. They are humble and hardworking. Fear, fatigue and crime are not known to them. Christine Osborne relates a very interesting incident to show the simplicity of life in Hunza,
"Out for a stroll, I passed an elderly woman struggling uphill with tins of sloshing water. Instinctively I took them, motioning her to lead as she hopped from rock to rock like a tiny ibex. Her small house stood on a cliff in upper Karimabad. It was clean, but lacked any comforts. She had a roof over her head, but with only a bedroll, a plate and mug, she owned little more than a nomad. Squatting on the dirt floor, she spoke through the usual boy interpreter. She lived alone, never wore shoes. And her age? 'Three hundred and ten', he said in perfectly accented English!"
Though exaggerated, longevity of the Hunzakuts is proverbial. In Hunza, one may come across many old people at the peak of their health. When asked their ages, they will not set it below ninety. One hundred is not a rare figure. However, according to the research of Dr. Muller Stellrecht, tales of people living great ages are not true. Some may survive to live seventy and even ninety years but tales of centenarians are false. Somehow, Hunzakuts are healthy and strong. It is largely due to their vegetarian diet of cereals and fruits. They do suffer from goiter, tuberculosis and bronchitis but mostly meet their natural deaths.
Hunzakuts live in gray mud-rock houses. Most of the houses have two or three stories. The people live in lower storey in winter and upper storey in summer. Usually, they do not keep windows or ventilators but a skylight in the roof. Houses face west with their backs to cold Ultar Glacier. Verandas and roofs are used for drying apricot and maize.
Cattle breeding and farming are popular professions in Hunza. Sheep, goats, yak and horses are domestic animals. Hunzakuts use sheep wool and goat hair to spin a rough cloth. This is used to weave caps and long coats. Traditions are still intact. Men spin goat hair and women only sheep's wool. Despite brief summer, industrious people of Hunza cultivate two crops a year. They work in terraced fields, which rise from the foot of hills to the top. Each terrace is walled with stones. Hunzakuts work long hours in their fields moving from one terrace to the other. One can count as many as thirty terraces in a single field.
Before the British occupation, a reasonable arms industry also existed in Hunza. Skillful craftsmen used to manufacture old muzzle-loading rifles. However, the profession is dying out slowly. Christine Osborne cites General Hamid's interesting description of the old rifles in these words:
"There is nothing like it in the rest of the world…The trigger is fixed somewhere near the end of the butt. When it is pulled, it brings down a big semi-circular hammer. The trigger and hammer are so situated that an inexperienced man using the gun might have his nose caught between the hammer and the butt… The owner of the gun has to carry such additional items required in connection with the firing… a pouch for the gunpowder, pieces of iron or garnets to be used as pellets, a piece of
flint, an iron edge tightly secured in a wooden handle, cotton wool for wicks etc… A wick impregnated with a little powder is tied to the cocked hammer of the gun…When the trigger is pulled the dangling wick descends. When it correctly falls into the upper recess containing some powder, spark is produced which, traveling inward into the barrel, fires off the main charge. It will thus be seen that several conditions must get fulfilled before the gun can be made to fire… any bird or animal which allows itself to be shot with this gun deserves death… the animal must be either asleep, deaf…and requested to keep still for a few minutes while the whole process of shooting is gone through."
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