VIZAG matters - Sohan Hatangadi's Blog

  Jayshree Hatangadi Heritage Narrator's theme was "180 degrees six stories"

WRONG MESSAGE FROM GVMC! We are headed on the wrong track. The best beaches in the world are kept natural with minimal landscaping but with basic amenities and top-class maintenance. Mass tourism on our beaches is destroying our valuable natural asset. After every event, we pay for the clean-up. Permanent damage is inflicted upon our sea. It is a simplistic myth that the type of "tourism" we get benefits the city. On the contrary, it diminishes our brand equity, ruins our natural assets and has no great economic gain because we follow the "high footfall, low revenue" model. Meaning that most of the tourists spend pittance in Vizag and trample upon our eco-sensitive assets. We should first deal with the huge geddas that deposit filth on our beaches every day. They will need a massive 200-300 crores budget. After that is fixed think of "beautification" Telling a citizen that he or she comes last on the priority is an insult to us. You build a ci...

ERRA MATTI DIBBALU, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India 24 Km from Palm Beach Hotel and 10 Km before Bheemili on the beach road Coordinates:  17 52.078' N, 083 25.845 E This video takes us on a quick visit to the Erra Matti Dibbalu site. It explains why the area is important and the terrible impact of garbage on its natural beauty, For more than a decade now the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Department has been mishandling this site. Half-hearted attempts to convert it into a valuable tourist spot have failed. A couple of years ago it was declared as Geo Heritage site by an NGO but due to poor follow up and low management inputs it made no difference. It pops up in the news occasionally and vanishes from public view again. We must all work hard to give it the status it deserves. PLEASE CLICK THE LINKS BELOW TO SEE WHY IT NEEDED A CLEAN-UP BEFORE CLEANING UP https://youtu.be/xwtULGwRXtM Erra Matti Dibbalu (Red Sand Dunes) is a beautiful but neglected site. It ...

By what I saw, when snarled in traffic for 2 hours on 31st night, there could be at least a lakh, drunken revelers, on bikes and cars on 31st night and early hours of 1st Jan. It is surprising therefore that only 287 were booked. Perhaps our wonderful men in uniform were lenient that night in the spirit of New Year. But if they booked, say 25,000 and penalized each Rs. 1,000/- they would have collected revenue of rupees 2.5 Crores! Even if there was an administrative expense of say Rs. 25 lakh for the deployment of manpower and the penalizing machinery we would still have a surplus of Rs. 2 crores. Perhaps we should consider outsourcing this activity next year at Rs. 50L for the contractor. Anything they make after expenses is theirs. Something to think about  😁

STOP DESTROYING OUR BEACH https://youtu.be/RU8I2rIFLh4 CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO FIND OUT HOW VISAKHA UTSAV DAMAGES OUR BEACH AND SEA If we keep quiet we will lose the beauty of our beach and the Temporary leaders and bureaucrats don't give a damn about our real Vizag. Vizagites, please share this message. Let the authorities know that the destruction of our natural assets will not be tolerated anymore. Everything is not empty show business and commerce. Stop the madness now.

In 2014, a group of heritage enthusiasts, visiting Bavikonda stumbled upon a fenced piece of  land near the ancient Buddhist Monuments. Ever since the question as to who owns the land and how they came to possess such a land next to a protected 3rd Century BC heritage site has puzzled many. Questions were asked of local administration but no answers have come in the last four years. This video highlights the story in 2 minutes.

Powered by hydraulic pressure due to copious rains in a short period on 1st and 3rd May, massive quantities of plastics has come down from the geddas and landed at our beaches. Some 20% of it will have reached the sea waters by now and half of that may be pushed back ashore over a series of high tides. Certainly a large portion will remain in the sea destroying our marine life. Tactically now will be the best time to remove as much plastics as possibl e from the gedda-beach-sea ecosystem. We can turn this disaster into an opportunity by grabbing and removing as much of this rubbish as possible. The red mud that washed towards the beach can be handled later, it would be better to put all of GVMC's resources into capturing the plastics when we can and take them out of the system. WE MUST ACT URGENTLY.

Our beach road is already bursting at the seams. A once quiet place to enjoy the beauty of the sea and relax has become a 24X7 Mela. Loudspeakers blaring, protesters protesting, traffic crawling slowly, frequent traffic jams and the relentless press of humanity. We do not seem to understand the importance of quiet common areas. On one hand GVMC with chosen beach road development consultants are  working on plans to decongest our beach road and on the other hand bodies like VUDA and others are planning to take up a completely unnecessary project with our tax money.  There is no parking for the existing aircraft and submarine museum. Now we want to integrate the aircraft museum, the submarine museum and the Victory at Sea memorial at a humongous cost of Rs. 40 crores! Meanwhile really important jobs that have been pending for years are ignored. For example our tourism department cannot find a few lakhs to print tourist guides for the tourist season. The interpr...

PRESS NOTE 3 April 2018 ‘World Heritage Day 2018’ Photo Exhibition VISAKHA CAMERA CLUB is organizing a Heritage Photo Exhibition on the following dates: April 17th 2018 from 5 pm to 7 pm  & April 18th 2018  from 11 am to 7.30 pm at Visakha Museum Awakening an empathy for heritage, the purpose of this event is to build awareness among Vizagites about their fascinating heritage comprising ancient monuments, recent or old buildings that have heritage value, natural landscapes that are a gift of nature to our city, flora and fauna, arts and crafts, traditional utensils, things we used in our childhood, festivals, cultural traditions and practices unique to our area. Professional and amateur photographers who wish to showcase their craft are invited to share photographs in print of size 12" X 15" either in color or B&W. Due to space constraint each photographer can please share to a maximum of 5 prints. Selected photos will be displaye...

The Fly boarding demo was an amazing performance by a supremely talented man. Check out the video below folks !

This should be a good time for our head-in- the-clouds tourism officials to get Back to Basics. Let us learn from the recent HOT AIR BALLOON FESTIVAL at Araku. Rs. 5,00,00,000 spent on damp squib balloon festival. Who benefited? A few reporters, some officials, the event organizers and their friends and family and a few of those who sucked up to appropriate persons in the political hierarchy in Vijayawada. We did not even sell Vizag to the foreign balloon crew. They had no idea about what Vizag or Araku was all about. What about tourists? We got perhaps less than a hundred real extra tourists on one day at ARAKU! So what was the cost of acquisition per tourist? You work it out! Remember the tamasha about Heli-Tourism? There was so much hullabaloo about it, lots of our money spent but within a month it has gone phut! Buddhist tourism all talk no action With fanfare and trumpetry two "interpretation centers" were built at Thotlakonda and Bavikonda a...

Public opinion is finally building up. It is great to see the press voicing such concerns!   Now, we must play our part. JUST AVOID ATTENDING ANY BEACH EVENT FOR ONE YEAR. It will stop this spiraling madness of taking every event to our beaches. Even we the NGOs should avoid taking every activity to the beach road unless it is absolutely necessary. Every member is so competent in use of social media that we could have the event anywhere else and we will still get the audience. Please Share !

The only city that doesn't have a visible sign showing the turn to the airport. Is that because we are a smart city?

 This GVMC initiative must be recognized as path breaking. Tree moving has been known from a long time and we have seen  YouTube videos of machines purpose built for this work. Tree transplantation video But this is probably the first time our civic body has aggressively moved to save a full grown tree. If such an attitude is adopted we can expect to reverse the decline in green cover of our cities.

The proposed construction of a new Rs. 700 crore convention centre at the APIIC grounds opposite Harbour Park near RK beach has set alarm bells ringing for many Vizagites. Especially, for those living in the vicinity. It is true that Vizag does not have a large conference Center and adequate rooms to host a large conference.  Any city that  aspires to be a MICE destination must have adequate purpose-built space for hosting large events. So when the space became available near the beach it was natural for the government to grab the opportunity to build it here. But it seems to be a grave mistake. The proposal is for this 14 acre land is to have 5,000 seat conference halls, 200 room hotel, multiplex theaters and a shopping mall.  There are only two roads to access the complex.  The harbor park road on the West and the Beach road on the East. There is one small unused narrow road adjacent to the Pandurangaswamy temple. The beach road is narrow and crow...

The ugly face of Tenneti Park.   All these Styrofoam  plates will long outlive  several of our coming  generations. Styrofoam lasts 500 years, and even after it has dissolved it's chemical traces will clog our ecosystem.    This is what happens with "beach tourism". Great to talk about it  but after it is set up it is no one's baby!

As in January 2017 and now in Dec 2017  temple replicas have been put up on the beach for Visakha Utsav which is essentially a tourist promotion event. Cardboard temples 1.Faith is personal and the state government encouraging such mass promotion of temples in the name of tourism does not reflect a modern society. 2. The government is making a commercial "franchise" out of these temples. Like a branded store opening branches in different areas. Places of religious worship have a sanctity of its own by virtue of being there for centuries. The idea that we build Plaster of Paris models of those temples and prey upon the visitor's faith somehow appears dishonest. 3. The Constitution of India recognises all religions equally. We are a secular and pluralistic country. If we build temples why not mosques, churches and Gurudwaras? Are we making temples because we are a majority Hindu area? There is something  morally wrong in this thinking. 4. If we want religio...

We go to our beaches for relaxation and some peace.  But now days, every day, we are confronted with more cacophony and chaos there. Our beaches are destination for myriad events. Variety programs,  food festivals, musical shows, marathons,  flash dances, protests, rallies, parties, awareness drives, and  hundreds of other events. Ahaa! We get an idea  and head straight for the beach to show it off to the world! Every alternate day there is some noisy program on the beach road as if there is no other place anywhere in Vizag.  Every week we are impacted terribly by the mikes, sounds,  crawling traffic and increased pollution.  Every program results in tons of extra garbage which has to be cleared.  Please remember that we are paying the taxes which GVMC uses to clean the beach road every day.  I can appreciate that some program like NAVY DAY must be celebrated only on the beach but certainly not every miscellaneo...

Sustainable tourism a tool for development this year's theme of World Tourism Day appears to have been buried under an avalanche of exciting  tourism EVENTS coming to Vizag from 27th Sep to 2nd Oct.  You know how "creative" we are, We will have Rock Night, Retro Night, Melody Night and glitzy Bollywood performers entertaining the entertainment starved populace of Vizag. These  programmes will be held on our one and only BEACH ROAD already bursting with local crowds. So please expect the blasting blare of speakers and "mike testing halla...halla...halla" late into the night every night on the beach with the local boys hanging around. And the MC yelling "GOOD EVENING VIZAGGGGGG!" While the whole world takes up frivolous issues like Sustainable Tourism we have decided to be  intellectually fresh and different ... we  have decided to have SONG & DANCE Not to forget "new" programmes like Children's painting contest,  elocutio...

There is no doubt that a vibrant filming industry not only generates welcome revenue but - if  the context of the film is right - it shows the city in favourable light making it an attractive destination. For example "Lord of the rings" NEW ZEALAND, "Game of thrones" CROATIA  or "When Harry met Sejal" in PRAGUE, AMSTERDAM,  VIENNA to name a few. Switzerland has got a thriving filming industry popularizing it's towns such as ENGELBERG. However in every such place the rules for shooting films are well defined and stringent. Especially rules against polluting the locations. In the India this is not the case. When travelling in Aru Valley Kashmir in 2015 we saw thousands of Styrofoam plates strewn in green grasslands by a film crew shooting a Hindi film. Closer to home in Anjoda on the outskirts of Araku, after every shoot, the beautiful wooded forests are full of plastic packets, plates and plastic cups. Outdoor film shoots are a mess. In Vizag...