Hyderabad, Jan 07: Over 7 lakh people have attended the third Telangana International Kite Festival at Parade Grounds between January 13 and 15, making it the first major event of the year.
The State government through Telangana Tourism had organized the crowd-puller, where the first-of-its-kind international sweets festival turned out to be the highlight.
More than 1,200 varieties of sweets from 25 Indian States and 12 countries were sold by 2,200 women dressed in ethnic attires. All sweets were homemade and represented only by women living in Hyderabad, Director of the Department of Language and Culture Mamidi Harikrishna told media.
"More than 35 lakh residents of Hyderabad, of an estimated 1.10 crore residents, are originally from other States. We have a 'Mili-Juli' culture in Hyderabad, which manifests in the form of harmony between communities. To promote this unity, for the last three years, we have been organizing several inter-State cultural festivals. The sweet festival was organized to take this beautiful inter-regional and cross-cultural congruence to the next level," said Harikrishna.
Apart from 98 professional kite flyers from 12 countries and 20 States, over 1,000 artistes captivated the attention of visitors with cultural performances in the evening on all the three days.
"The Hyderabad Metro Rail officials told us that the Rasoolpura and Paradise stations of the Metro were packed with commuters on these three days," said Tourism Commissioner Sunita Bhagwat.