Travel & Tourism
With the end of the rainy season, the boat handlers of Phewa Lake have started to get busy. With the increase in domestic and foreign tourists, the handlers are busy collecting money for the festival.
The Covid-19 pandemic affected the tourism business in Pokhara. Business is now picking up. The start of the Dashain festival saw an influx of tourists. This added knots to boat handlers’ business and raised prospects of good income.
Boat skipper Chijman Gurung says, “The number of tourist arrivals has increased after the threat of Coronavirus decreased."
He says the guests who came to Pokhara would visit Phewa Lake and take a boat ride, resulting in the rise of income among hundreds of boat handlers in the lake city.
"During Covid-19 pandemic, we were whiling away time without income. It was difficult even to raise a child," he says. "As the coronavirus has subsided, more tourists have started to come for boating."
Before the pandemic, Gurung earned up to Rs1,500 daily. His earnings have dropped to Rs800 a day.
Samir Manandhar, a Syangja native, says he has never returned home without going for a boat ride every time he visits the lake city. He could not travel for the last two years because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but he came to Pokhara during the Dashain holiday.
"I rushed straight to Phewa Lake as soon as I arrived here from Syanja. Then, I hired a boat to ride around the Barahi Temple in the middle of the lake," he says.
Phewa Boat Entrepreneurs Association President Balram Giri says, “Many tourists have started coming to Pokhara with the onset of the festival.
The boat owners and skippers are getting busy because the tourists who come to Pokhara, rush to board boats in Phewa Lake.
According to Giri, 726 boats ply from eight piers along the lake banks: Barahi, Fishtail, Ambot, Gauri, Pahari, Swimmingpool, Phewa and Bangladi. Twenty-five women skipper those boats, and the rest are all men. The boat skippers remain busy throughout the day at the piers. Young people comprise a high number of tourists, he adds.
The association has formed a committee to monitor the boat skippers following complaints of high ticket fares from some tourists.
Monitoring committee coordinator Pritam Kunwar says such complaints have reduced considerably after the committee started vigilance inspections.
"A boat ride fare from Barahighat to Barahi Temple has been fixed at Rs60. But there have been complaints that skippers had charged arbitrary and high ticket fare," Kunwar says. "We have been monitoring boats regularly. We take immediate action if we come across any irregularities."
Kunwar says the rise in domestic tourists in the city during Dashain has brought smiles back on the faces of boat owners and skippers.
Some skippers could, perhaps, sing the famous 19th-century nursery rhyme ‘Row, row, row your boat Gently down the stream merrily merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream'.
