The scenic beachside locale of Mangamaripeta has turned into a hotspot of entertainment activities with tourists and local crowd thronging the place every weekend. What once used to be a small fishing colony is today a thriving zone of activities like water-sports and go-karting with several new fun sports like Segway, hoverboard, paintball, rifle-shooting, archery, golf and boarding introduced recently at HiFY Go Karting Arena.
“This summer has been particularly good for us. And with the weather cooling down in the past 10 days, we have seen a 30% increase in footfalls to the Go Karting Arena,” its founder Pramod Kumar told The Hindu . Ever since the city’s first-ever dedicated kart racing circuit was thrown open to the public in 2014, it has been drawing visitors, some professional racers, to the arena and also hosted major events like the finals of the National Karting Championship in 2014 and Autocross events from the past two years.
“This year we aim to bring back the National Karting Championship to the city. We are in talks with the Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India and hope to host it in November this year,” Mr. Kumar said. The Go Karting Arena will also be hosting its annual Autocross event later this year.
“Three finalists from Vizag of the Autocross event have also gone on to participate in car rallies held in New Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata,” he added.
Combo offers, discounts
With the rush of visitors picking up from the past two weekends, several combo offers and discounts are being offered at the HiFY Go Karting Arena where people can enjoy activities by paying from ₹100 to ₹400 for each sport.
This apart, water sports activities have picked up in the backwaters of Mangamaripeta. Sadiq Mohammed of Ocean Wave Water Sports — the firm that conducts these waters sport activities — said Saturday saw a great turnout of visitors with the weather being ideal for kayaking. Recently, new water sport activities like jet skiing, banana rides and zorbing were introduced. Local visitors and tourists, however, feel a lot can be done to make the beaches more visitor-friendly.
‘Make beaches cleaner’
“This spot can be compared to the best beaches in the country. We rarely see such a natural beauty of backwaters, sea and hills in one place. But the beaches should be made cleaner. There are plastics strewn across the waters and the approach road is also not properly laid,” said Natasha of New Delhi, who was here on a short vacation. “We did some awareness campaigns sometime back to stop open defecation. While that problem has been solved, cleanliness and proper accessibility are areas that still need to be addressed. Once the Mangamaripeta bridge is completed, we expect the water flow to be better,” added Mr. Mohammed.
