Three-day snow festival to kickstart at Galyat from Jan 31

ISLAMABAD – The Galyat Development Authority (GDA) has finalised the preparations for holding a three-day snow festival in the city’s different valleys in next week to promote winter sports and adventure tourism in the country.

“The first-ever multi-locational snow festival will start at Galyat from January 31 to boost the tourism activities in the province under the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan,” the GDA spokesman told APP on Sunday.

The event was aimed to promoting Galyat as a tourist resort for the entire year where the tourists visited only in tourism season, usually.

He said a number of games and competitions had been arranged for the tourists including skiing, sculpture making, graffiti, tug of war, ice football, archery, snow tubing, and V-log and photography competitions.

Besides, setting up stalls, the spokesman said motorbike and jeep rallies had also been arranged at Nathia Gali, Donga Gali and Ayubia, on February 1st and 2nd , adding that the jeep rally would be started from Kuza gali and culminated at Nathia Gali.

He said the cultural and food stalls would be installed to showcase unique culture and splendid cuisine of the area. Music concerts had also been arranged to fascinate the visiting tourists.

“The basic concept of snow festival is to draw tourists from across the world for winter sports at Galyat,” he remarked.

Galyat is the one of most visiting tourist sites of Pakistan and located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above the sea level.

According to the GDA, tourist traffic to Galyat has registered a marked increase of some 139 per cent in December, 2019 as compared to the corresponding period, mainly due to improved road infrastructure and inclusive steps taken by the Kyber Pakhtunkhwa government for tourism promotion.

As many as 205, 200 local and foreign tourists have visited different valleys of Galyat during the last month of previous year whereas only 85,600 entered the area in December, 2018.