7-day festival at Bengal beaches in December

Kolkata: Purba Midnapore District Administration and Digha Shankarpur Development Authority (DSDA) will organise a seven-day long beach festival to attract both domestic and foreign tourists. This is for the first time when such a venture has been taken up.

The festival will be held between December 20 and 26 at Digha, Mandarmoni, Tajpur and Shankarpur. The festival will be held following the initiative taken by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to upgrade the beach towns and woo tourists.

There will be several items to attract the tourists. For the first time, beach volleyball competitions will be held at Tajpur. Beach volleyball has become enormously popular in Europe, USA, South America, Australia and New Zealand and recently it has come to India and beach volleyball tournaments are being held in Kerala and Karnataka. Senior officials of DSDA hoped that beach volleyball will attract both domestic and foreign tourists.

There will be a motorcycle rally to propagate the message of safe drive save life. Many people visit the beach resorts on motorcycles and they will take part in the rally along with officials and volunteers of Purba Midnapore district administration. There is a tendency among some bikers to ride the two-wheelers fast in and around beaches and these have caused some accidents in which several people were injured.

The awareness campaign will send a message to those who drive bikes fast. The tourists will get an opportunity to travel on hot air balloons to have a bird's eye view of the beaches and its adjoining areas. Swiss tents will be set up for the tourists on the sea beaches. There will be a book fair, display of handicrafts by the women of Self Help Groups and a handicraft fair. There will be cultural programmes in the evenings where folk music will be given a priority.