A team of adventure sports trainers of A.P. Tourism on Saturday extended a one-day training to a 55-member group of students at the famous Puligundu tourism project of Penumuru mandal, 25-km. from Chittoor.
The students, consisting of both girls and boys pursuing the B.Tech streams at Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Vellore, reached Haritha Adventure Resorts at the foot of Puligundu hillock in the morning, guided by an expert group of trainers hired by the tourism officials.
In three slots, the students were given exposure to rapling, trekking gradients and climbing steep rocks.
The 7-hour long session concluded in the evening.
The students said that the adventure sports are part of their academic curriculum. Tourism Manager (Puligundu) P.S. Mamatha said that in order to develop adventure tourism at the hillock site, as many as eight suites and a restaurant with a capacity to house in about one hundred visitors is being maintained, in addition to a conference hall for the purpose of holding sessions for students undergoing training. The official said that Puligundu would be developed into an ace center for adventure sports in the coming years, and proposals pertaining to this have been sent to the State government.
Puligundu is a twin-rock giant formation up to a height of over one thousand feet. During the British Raj, the hillock was named ‘Tiger Rocks’. Atop the hill, an ancient Shiva temple is located, which attracts thousands of devotees from all over the South during festive occasions such as Maha Shivaratri and Karthika month.