Welcome to Pokhara Street Festival | RecentFusion.com

Welcome to Pokhara Street Festival
Street Festival is one of the biggest carnivals organized in Pokhara. It is organized by the REBAN, Pokhara on the occasion of English New Year. Like an old proverb “light attracts life”, it too attracts thousands of visitors from within and outside the country. To make the street festival more lively, REBAN organizes different activities apart from the foods to be served to the visitors. This year too, time has come to celebrate this carnival and REBAN is going under its final preparation. We took an interview of Surya Bhujel, president of REBAN, Pokhara, to know more about the street festival that is going to be organized at the end of this year. Details:

When will we be able to celebrate the street festival?
Street festival will be organized from 28th dec, 08 to 1st Jan, 09.

What Socio-economic impact does the Street Festival have to Pokhara?
Street Festival means a lot for a lot of people. Economically, it is beneficial to lots of people. This is the time of year people love to make trade off between their incomes for entertainment. This is the reason why people choose this time to make vacation trip to Pokhara which provides good income for the hotels and restaurants of Pokhara. This festival mobilizes huge number of human resources from different sectors. The festival gives good business for the handicrafts and other industries associated with food and entertainment.

This festival also helps to preserve our culture and rituals. This Street Festival provides the biggest platform to exhibit different cultural shows attached to different ethnic groups. The management committee too makes financial contribution to certain extent to encourage such activity.

How many visitors came to the Street festival last year and what is your expected number of visitor this year?
This event attracts lots of visitors from within and outside the country. Last year, more than 4 lakh people came to this festival, among which 3 lakh 50 thousand visitors were local, 50 thousand visitors were from other cities of Nepal and 30,000 visitors were from India and other foreign countries. This year we have an expectation of around 5 lakh to 5 lakh 50 thousand visitors, among which 4 lakh to 4 lakh 50 thousand is expected from Pokhara and places around Pokhara, 50-80 thousand visitors from other places of Nepal and 50 thousand visitors from India and other foreign countries.

Do you have special programs for the foreigners?
Yes, we do have special programs for the foreigners. This year we have good number of foreigners to celebrate Christmas and New Year with us. We are thinking to do something very special on the Christmas day apart from Street Festival. As Christmas is already declared as a national holiday, it’s a duty of ours to organize special program for the Christmas. We too have many other activities triggering to the foreigners in the Street Festival.

How will you make this year’s street festival different to last year's street festival?
The basic theme of the festival will be same as Street festival represents food festival. Actually the name should be like REBAN Street Food Festival, but its popularity gave it a new name. Today it's more popular by Pokhara Street Festival and its our pride to say that. Though the theme may be same, we will be conducting different activities apart from just serving foods. This year we will be conducting few activities that will make it distinctive to the past years Street festivals. The events cannot be published right now as it’s a secret and will be a cornerstone for this year’s street festival success. It will just spice you up.

Do visitors have to pay money for the entrance ticket of Street Festival?
No, this time visitors don’t have to pay for the entrance ticket. The entrance ticket fee was taken in 2005 with a noble motive. The whole fund accumulated from the ticket was used for social causes like the preservation of lake and to raise the voice for international airport in Pokhara. Though this year there will not be any entrance fee in main entrance, there may be some closed areas within the street festival area where the visitors need to pay a small fee for the entrance.

What are the ways through which you are promoting your event nationally and internationally?
We will be using different media to promote the event nationally and internationally. For the national promotion, we will be using the national and local print and visual media. Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) has listed this event in its calendar, which was circulated to different parts of the world. Thus NTB will promote this event in the international scenario through its one way. A team from REBAN will visit to different parts of the country to promote the event. We will also use some of the most popular sites of Nepal to promote the event nationally and internationally.

At last do you have anything to say to our surfers?
Street festival is one of the biggest carnivals of Pokhara and Nepal, so please come to Pokhara to see this event. This festival is full of spices, where you will be served with the best foods in the world, events that you can watch or participate, music to abandon your tiredness and lots of other activities that will grab your attention. In short words, this festival provides you a window to see the Pokhara in short span on time, so this will be the best time to plan your vacation to Pokhara. You can get more information in our web portal http://www.rebanpokhara.com.

By Ravi Shrestha

« Back | Top