International Elephant Festival to start in Nepal this Wednesday

Kathmandu: Nepal would host  9th international elephant festival  starting from  Wednesday at  Chitwan district  which houses famous Chitwan National Park.

Elephant race, elephant football, elephant beauty contest and other shows will be organised in the three-day event.

“We are trying to make it more interesting,” Suman Ghimire, general secretary of the local hotel association and member of the organising team, told Xinhua.

Twenty-four elephants will participate in the race, eight elephants in football match, and five elephants will take part in the beauty contest, said Ghimire.

Tourists from various countries have already arrived at the site.

“I think it will be a good event, it’s an international event. Elephant are wonderful creatures,” Nevlle Neil, 60, from Australia told Xinhua.

The Chitwan National Park is the second major home of the one horned rhino after the Kaziranga National Park in Assam, India. Some 400 rhinos live in Chitwan.

Kaziranga, a world heritage site, has more than 2,000 rhinos.