Kathmandu, Sept 12 : A total of 48 foreign guests including five mayors of various cities of some foreign countries are arriving today in Kathmandu to attend ongoing Indra Jatra festival. This is the first time that Kathmandu Metropolitan City has invited foreign guests.
The foreign guests attending the festival are from India, China, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Japan and the United States of America. “Inviting foreign guests to attend the festival aims to promote ‘Visit Nepal Year 2020’.
The festival will help Nepali culture get exposed to the world,” said KMC Mayor Bidya Sundar Shakya at a press conference on Wednesday.
Stay of the guests will last five days, and the KMC has a plan to take the guests on a tour of various areas of KMC including Bahal, Bahi, Lalitpur Metropolitan City and Bhaktapur municipality, he said.
“Spending for this purpose is KMC’s future investment to promote tourism. Kathmanduties will get returns on the investment in the future.” The KMC sent an invitation to representatives of 13 cities of the six countries with which Nepal has sister’s relations for the festival.
The visiting guests include the mayors of Lhasa in China, East Delhi Municipal Corporation and North Delhi Municipal in India and Dhaka South City Corporation in Bangladesh. Likewise, other guests are high ranking officials from Shiyan, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Lanzhou City of China, Matsumoto of Japan and Frederick Darren Berg and Boulder of the US.
On Friday, the guests will also be taken on a chariot around Hanuman Dhoka, said Shakya. Likewise, they will take a view of the lower and upper village in the area by a walk before lively observing the pulling of the chariot that is slated at noon in the presence of Head of the State.
They are also scheduled to visit Chandragiri Hills, Natural History Museum in Chhauni and Swayambhu on Saturday and Bhaktapur and Patan Durbar Squares on Sunday. Farewell will be said to them on the same evening.
On the occasion, Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yogesh Bhattarai is slated to participate. Mayor Shakya also asked all people to make this festival a success. “Not only Newar community’s, this is a national festival of all,” he said.
