On the occasion of English New Year, the 26th edition of the Pokhara Road Festival organized by the Restaurant and Bar Association (Rewan) Pokhara at Lakeside has started from Saturday. With the aim of promoting Pokhara as a destination for the English New Year, the festival is being held in the three kilometer area of ​​the lakeside.

Rewan Pokhara has been organizing the festival every year with the slogan 'Let's eat on the streets, dance on the streets, have fun on the streets'. This festival, which will be held until December 17, takes place in the area from Komagane Park to Chautara in Gaihra. The festival was inaugurated by Information and Communication Minister and Government Spokesperson Prithvisubba Gurung. The main attractions of the

festival are endangered cultural programs of different ethnic groups, original costumes, tableau performances, national and international food performances, and live concerts. In terms of sports, there will be boat race, waiter race, tug of war, meat and sausage eating competition. Awareness-raising street plays and dialogue programs have also been organized focusing on Pokhara's tourism promotion, development, opportunities and challenges. 

Pokhara Serofero's local products, handicrafts, paintings, sculptures, agriculture, plants and other products will be exhibited with priority, said Bikas Bhattarai, the festival coordinator and the first vice president of Rewan Pokhara.  Birendra Sherchan, coordinator of the

festival, said that the street festival has become a dynamic means of making economic activities run at the local level, earning foreign currency and creating jobs. "We estimate that 4 to 5 lakh domestic and foreign tourists will be present at the festival," he said, "especially Indian tourists come to Pokhara to celebrate the new year." He recalled that many Nepali citizens also go abroad to celebrate the English New Year. 

'Foreign tourists used to leave Nepal as there were no attractive events in Nepal,' he said, 'However, due to the continuity of the past 25 years, an environment has been created for not only Nepalese but also foreigners to celebrate the New Year in Pokhara.' He said that there has been a significant increase in arrivals. On the occasion of the festival, hotel and restaurant, paragliding and other discounts have also been arranged. 

Pokhara's tourism business is driven by trekking tourism. Due to the cold weather in the Himalayan region Annapurna, Dhailagiri, Manaslu, tourists cannot go trekking. Earlier, the tourists who reached the padayatra also returned and returned to India, Thailand and their own home to celebrate the New Year. In this way, domestic tourists from all over the country come to the Pokhara Street Festival, which started 25 years ago with the aim of making the tourists who return home to celebrate the New Year forget in Pokhara. In recent years, Pokhara Street Festival is developing as a national festival.

Before the start of the street festival, there was no program targeting local and foreign tourists in Pokhara until 1997. During the English New Year, the tourists in Nepal used to return to India, Goa, Thailand and their own country to celebrate the New Year and Christmas. Ganesh Bahadur Bhattarai, the coordinator of the first Pokhara Road Festival, remembers that at that time there was no custom of honoring domestic tourists as tourists. The festival, which first started as Lakeside Street Festival in 1998, has developed into Pokhara Street Festival since 1999.