Digha Beach Festival Kicks off in West Bengal

West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee kicked off a four-day Digha beach festival on Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. Digha is nearly 174 km from Kolkata.

The sea beaches in and around the Digha area, including the popular Mandarmoni, have been decked up with lights and placards. Various stalls have come up along the stretch offering lip-smacking sea food.

In order to draw more tourists to the area, arrangements for water sports have been made with two expert water sports players roped in from Goa for the purpose.

The four-day festival, being held from Jan. 13 to 16, is being organized by the tourism and youth affairs ministries and the Digha Sankarpur Development Authority.

Tourists can enjoy water sports, adventure sports and sea activities at Digha beach. A place called Tajpur near Digha is being developed as a major adventure-tourism spot offering a host of sports activities like water-skiing, para-sailing, water zorbing, snorkelling etc.

A seafood festival has also been arranged where tourists can select their favorite sea fish such as Hilsa, Pomphret, Betki and Prawn that would be prepared in front of them and served piping hot.

Various kinds of beach sports such as beach cricket, beach volleyball, kabaddi and all-terrain bike competitions would also be organized on the 23-km stretch of hard beach along Digha and Mandarmoni.