Kathmandu, May 16 The country received 387,568 tourists in the first four months of 2018 via air routes. According to Nepal Tourism Board, tourist arrivals surged by 45,993 or 13.46 per cent compared to the same period of 2017. Nepal had received a total of 341,575 international visitors in the first four months of 2017. NTB has said it expects the flow of international tourists to cross one million by the end of 2018 if the country is able to maintain the momentum of the first quadrimester. It terms of flow of tourists, China ranked at the top with 53,528 Chinese tourists coming to Nepal in the first four months. It was followed by India, United States, United Kingdom and Thailand. A total of 50,745 Indian tourists visited Nepal via air route in the review period. Likewise, the US was the third largest contributor in terms of number of international visitors to Nepal, with 29,550 US passport holders visiting Nepal between January and April. Similarly, visitors from UK stood at 21,950 and 21,495 Thai tourists visited Nepal in the same period. Tourist arrival from other South Asian countries, apart from India, also picked up. As per NTB, a total of 18,166 tourists from Sri Lanka and 10,945 tourists from Bangladesh visited the country. Tourist arrival from Sri Lanka was better than arrivals from Germany and Australia. A total of 13,442 German nationals and 12,628 Australians visited Nepal.