Berbice Arrival Day Cultural Festival

Berbice marks Indian Arrival Day with its own cultural programme staged at Plantation Highbury, the actual 1838 landing site of the ships Whitby and Hesperus, and at the Indian Arrival Monument in nearby Palmyra Village. Local cultural groups perform classical dance, devotional singing and Tassa drumming, giving the region's commemoration a place-based character distinct from the national public holiday.

Plantation Highbury on the Berbice River is the actual landing site where the ships Whitby and Hesperus put ashore Guyana's first indentured Indian labourers on 5 May 1838, and Berbice communities mark Indian Arrival Day each year with a dedicated cultural programme staged at or near that historic ground rather than folding the occasion into Georgetown's national events alone.