Mongolia to hold yak festival to boost tourism

Mongolia will hold its fifth annual Yak Festival in its midwest Arkhangai Province on Aug. 17-18 to attract domestic and foreign tourists, a local official said Monday.

"Under the auspices of the Mongolian Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism, our province is preparing to organize the annual yak festival 'Mongol Yak' for the fifth year," Gansukh Battsetseg, a tourism official of Arkhangai, told Xinhua.

The festival aims to attract more domestic and foreign tourists by promoting the yak culture, said Battsetseg.

The two-day event will include a session about the sustainable development of yak farming, and entertainment like a yak parade, yak racing and a fashion show featuring yak wool clothes.

Arkhangai, about 465 km from the capital city of Ulan Bator, has more than 200,000 yaks.

The yak has a great value for nomadic breeders, as the animal has many uses and plays a necessary role in the development of a farm, and the festival highlights this kind of domesticated animal.

Mongolia is striving to develop its tourism sector in a bid to diversify its mining-dependent economy, and has set itself an annual goal of receiving 1 million visits by foreign tourists and earning 1 billion U.S. dollars from tourism by 2020.

The number of foreign visitors to Mongolia exceeded 529,000 in 2018, up some 11 percent from the previous year, according to the tourism ministry.