ACE PILOTS: Nirmal Man Tuladhar (left) runs with his Nepali kite at the biannual kite festival in Dieppe, France, recently. Tuladhar holds a huge lokta kite with his partner Ramesh Shrestha (right).

As Kathmandu gets ready for the Dasain kite season, our own national team has just returned from participating in the 30th Fighting Kite World Cup in Dieppe, France.
The skies over the Channel city blazed with colourful kites from all over the world. What the lokta ladaku changa from Nepal lacked in flashy colour and exotic construction, it more than made up by its maneuverability and fighting spirit.

"The Nepali changa outpaces every other kite in terms of its ability to dive, dodge, spin and soar," says Nirmal Man Tuladhar, who has been leading the Nepal team for more than a decade.

Listed among the 300 biggest world events, in all categories taken together, the Dieppe festival presented all the kite disciplines. Elaborately designed and artistically painted kites from China, Malaysia, Europe, India, and US competed for supremacy. Nepali kites stood out for their unique feature of being one of the few to be flown mainly to fight.

Lately, our own skies have been dominated by the "Lucknow" changa with their frilly and frisky avatars. Tuladhar wants to revive the tradition of the lokta changa, and says the Dieppe championship was the perfect place to showcase the amazing flying machines from Nepal.

But the festival offers its participants more than a platform for showcasing. Each time it is held, Tuladhar and his partner Ramesh Shrestha are treated to a world of limitless imagination. The skies at Dieppe explode with colour and shape, becoming a gallery of flying artwork.

The festival also offers opportunities for cultural exchange, where kite fliers attend each other's workshops, encouraging the fusion of ideas. Us kite lovers at home could make the best of this exposure by soaking in the spirit for innovation and creativity, perhaps by reviving the distinctive feel and look of Nepali kites to start with.
The kite jamboree is organised every two years and this year it was the 16th Festival.

Shahani Singh

www.dieppe-cerf-volant.org/dccv/ukaccueil.html

READ ALSO:
Soaring and Sparring

How to make a Nepali Fighter Kite

Materials needed:

* A split bamboo of 3 mm trimmed to 1.5 mm for a bow stick.
* A split bamboo of 2 mm for spine stick.
* Two bamboo sticks of 1.5 mm for a beard (tail).
* A sheet of lokta paper of 8 gram.
* A glue stick.