Belgaum's skyline comes alive with colour

The city wore a festive shade as colourful kites at the Belgaum International Kite Festival — touted as the most popular international event in South India — dotted the Belgaum skyline. Kites in the shape of birds, cartoons, fighter planes, butterflies and dragons, among others, were flown at the premises of the Angadi Institute of Technology and Management over the weekend.This is the fourth edition of the two-day international festival and over two lakh people were in attendance.
More than 80 kite flyers from across India and the world participated in the event. Deputy Commissioner N Jayaram inaugurated the event on Saturday morning by flying a kite with the slogan ‘Free Polio Now’. With him were former MLA Abhay Patil and industrialist Ram Bhandare. The first day of the festival saw people participating in the night kite flying, where the kites looked like tiny lamps twinkling in the night sky.
Kites depicting the Mysore Dasara festivities with the message ‘learn Kannada’ were a hit with the audiences. What also caught everyone’s attention was a Big Blue Beast, 10ft big kite by Johan Van-eeckhout and Vinita Vij from Belgium. Before coming to Belgaum, the couple participated in other kite festivals in Ahmadabad, Kolkata and Vadodara.
Ranno and Audress, a couple from Estonia, brought with them over 30 kites, in shapes as varied as a bulb, car, dog, sea horse and pilot. A long-tailed dragon kite by VK Rao from Bangalore looked like it was ruling the sky. Incidentally, Rao, the head of Kite Clinic Club in Bangalore, had flown the kite in the Kannada film Sipayi. As they day wore on, the crowd was in for a surprise. Some kites looked so real that a group of eagles were spotted trying to attack an eagle-shaped kite.