Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Korba Street Festival - Heliopolis

Last Friday was the annual Korba Street festival in Heliopolis - a residential suburb in Cairo.


Baghdad street was closed off to traffic and stalls were put up along the sidewalks. There were stalls from the Asean countries selling native food and some handicrafts.


The Indian stall just had posters urging visitors to visit India. Nothing else. :(


There were tables along the sides for families to relax and grab a bite and the main road was left free for kids to express their creativity on the road with chalk and paints.




Marriott's Bakery, Swiss Inn, Sultana Ice Cream had tables on the road and were serving food there. The Swiss Inn even had a buffet set up on the road. But the more exciting stuff to eat were the street stalls which were selling things like cotton candy,the hummus drink and beans.





I attended in the morning half and left by 1:30pm, before the crowds really started to pour in. This meant I missed out on the musical performances (by Wust el Balad among others) and the puppet show, but what I managed to catch was great anyway.

My friends tell me, there was a short parade later in the noon with flower covered floats and giant coke bottles. More of advertising than Spring flowers was a comment I heard.

What I got to see, kind of reminded me a bit of the Kala Ghoda festival in Bombay, but just a little bit. The concept is similar, but there is so much further that the Korba festival can go. Its a good start though, just to have an open air event in a residential area of Cairo.

I would definitely catch it again next year.

Also published on desicritics.org

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well i loved what you said , Insha'allah i'll attend same Festival this year ,and the information you put were really helpful ,thanks :)

Kim said...

The last I heard, the event has been cancelled this year because of a "terrorist threat" ?

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis