Pokhara:

Pokhara, one of the major tourist destinations of the country, is all set to welcome the New Year with much revelry.

Adding spice to the new celebrations is the ongoing seventh street festival. The five-day-long street festival, which kicked off on December 28, has been organised especially to mark the New Year.

Pokhara is a sight to behold. The 3- km-long road, from the local Fishtail gate to Patan of Dihi, is lined with hundreds of foods stalls selling different delicacies. However, the main attractions for this year’s street festival are the two elephants brought from Chitwan.

The festival also includes those aspects of the Nepali culture that are almost extinct, such as displaying of traditional grinders — dhiki and jaanto and traditional mat gundri.

You can enjoy and also cook Nepali delicacies such as selroti and curries in the food stalls. Clothes, handicrafts, paintings and different games are the other attractions of this street festival. Different traditional Nepali dances will also be performed.

Games like Tug-of-war, tourist racing, boat racing, mo-mo eating competition, sausage contest, beer drinking competition, wheel chair racing for the disabled, waiters’ racing, car pulling and hit the target are adding to the visitor’s delight, festival coordinator Surya Bahadur Bhujel said.

Chairman of the Pokhara Tourism Council, Ganesh Bahadur Bhattarai, said this kinds of festival help in the promotion of the tourism industry.

It is estimated that around 300,000 visitors will participate in the festival and the total income and expenditure from the festival is expected to be around be Rs 2 million and Rs 1.7 million respectively, chairman of Pokhara Chapter of Restaurants and Bar Association of Nepal (ReBAN), Chitra Jung Gurung said adding the main objective for organising of street festival is to develop Pokhara as ‘Destination Paradise’ and a destination for New Year’s celebrations.

The festival with the slogan ‘Conserve natural heritages and cultural heritage to promote tourism’, will end on January 1.