Hundreds of kites of different shapes and sizes including elephants, leopards, pandas, birds and snakes adorned the skies as the Colombo International Kite Festival got underway in Sri Lanka’s capital on Sunday.

Other kites represented sunflowers, horses, fish and various comic characters including Pinocchio.

Enthusiasts from 25 countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Indonesia, France, Australia, China, Thailand, South Korea, India and Singapore joined some 500 kite flyers from Sri Lanka.

The event was organized by the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau as part of destination branding for Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo.

The festival began in 2015 and had events until 2018 continuously. This is the first event since then.

“Sri Lanka for tourism is not that good, if you take the last couple of years —due to different, different reasons, [for example] political instability, the economic crisis, and so on and so forth," explained Ruwan Chaminda Ranasinghe, Sri Lanka's Deputy Tourism Minister.

"But now I think Sri Lanka is fully back to normal so that tourists come and enjoy."

AP Video shot by Jayamapthi Palipane