A two-country Himalayan Vegan Festival is being held in April 2022 in Thimpu, Bhutan and Kathmandu, Nepal. The festival organizing committee informed as much during a special vegan buffet held at Utpala Café, Boudha, on September 18.  

The first of the two-part event will be held in Kathmandu from April 15-17, to be followed by the second part in Thimpu from April 18-20.

The goal is to raise awareness about the benefits of a plant-based diet and encourage more people to go vegan. “There are endless reasons one should go vegan,” says Zachary Lovas, general secretary of World Vegan Organization and a member of the organizing team of the Himalayan Vegan Festival. “We want to promote a vegan lifestyle and educate people about the necessity of veganism in today’s world”.

An Oxford University study says adopting a vegan diet can reduce one’s carbon footprint by up to 73 percent. A lot of methane, a gas responsible for climate change and global warming, is produced during the raising of livestock. Then a copious amount of carbon-di-oxide and carbon-mono-oxide, both greenhouse gases, are released in their transport. If we stop eating meat and meat products, a major chunk of food-based air pollutants will be removed from the atmosphere.

Shifting to a plant-based has multiple health benefits and it helps eliminate animal cruelty. “There has always been this debate about whether humans are carnivorous, herbivorous, or omnivorous. Let us put all that aside and just be humans,” Lovas adds.