Sixth Nepal Education and Book Fair, country’s largest and annual education gala, concluded here on Friday. The fair, which was divided in two parts as education and career section and book section, had concluded its first part on May 6.

Participants, on the concluding day, expressed satisfaction over the outcome and business they made. Ganesh Ghale, staff of Ekta Books, said that they had good times in the fair in spite of worsening national economic scenario. He added that flows of visitors are not so upsetting rather the number was high than previous years. “I am quite satisfied with the fair since we had good times and business as well.”

Similarly, visitors’ number on Saturday increased outstandingly since being last day as well as Saturday. Organisers claimed that over 50,000 visitors visited fair on Saturday. They noted that more than 2 lakhs visitors visited the fair this year which is higher number than previous years.

The book festival, where books on all topics like literature, philosophy, science and technology, environment, mathematics and more others could be found, was really a grand occasion for those who are in academic field and who are suffering from the unavailability of sought books, most of the visitors expressed same sentiments whistle talking to The Himalayan Times.

“Book fair isn’t really splendour for booksellers only but to the visitors as well”, said Preeti Dangol, student of environment science, that this kind of fair would bring out a fruitful result in academic ground since she could find her references books in the fair which she had ferreting about in the book market for more days. She hoped such fair to organise at least two times in a year.

Education and Career section is a first event included in the book fair because Book fair organised in previous year had not included the section, so it was itself a significant event, according to the organisers. Nepalis students, who are facing hard times to get right suggestions concerning study abroad, received a grand occasion at the fair to get concrete information from the respective institutions since more renowned foreign educational institutions had participated in the fair to provide information regarding their own institutions.

Of total 120 national and international participants of the fair, 60 participants were in education and career section where most were from abroad especially from India. The fair organised by Global Exposition and Management Services (GEMS) in co-operation with National Booksellers and Publishers of Nepal (NEPAN) was inaugurated on May 3 by Dr Kamal Krishna Joshi, vice chancellor of Kathmandu University.