For the last 2 years my parents (and our extended family in India) have decided that we will take a short 3-4 day trip when I visit India each year in December. This is one trip where I don’t use any miles or hotel points. In fact my parents and rest of the gang don’t even let me take my wallet out for anything, not even meals.
This year the plan was to take the night train from Kolkata (my home city in India) to Visakhapatnam (Vizag for short) on Christmas Eve and stay there till December 29 and then take another night train back to Kolkata. The trip would also include a day excursion to Araku Valley.
One of my uncles found out that the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Board (state where Vizag is located in) has a resort called APTDC Haritha Beach Resort on Rushikonda Beach which provides excellent views of the beach, so it was decided we would be staying there for the entire trip.
The night train journey was uneventful. We arrived at Vizag early in the morning. The resort is located about 30 minutes from the train station.
Day 1:
We reached the resort around 9 AM. The front desk informed us that we would not be able to check-in till 11 AM, so we had to wait.
All our rooms had ocean facing views. Since the hotel is on a cliff facing the beach, all the room balconies have excellent views of the beach. If one wanted to get to the beach, its about a 10 minute walk down the hill or you could request a courtesy golf-cart service.
I was going to be staying in a room with my dad and one of my uncles. After showering, we decided to have lunch at the onsite restaurant.
After lunch, most of us took a nap. In the evening we sat chatting on the balcony overlooking the beach and went to bed early as next day was going to be a hectic one with all the sightseeing !!
Day 2:
We had a quick South-Indian breakfast of idli and dosa and vada.
Next we rented 2 Toyota Innova’s to take us on Vizag sightseeing tour.
First stop was Simhachalam Temple. It is a Lord Vishnu temple nestled in between hills of Vizag.
Next stop – Kailasgiri Park. This park is located on a hill with great views of the Vizag city as well as the ocean, it is a good place to spend an hour or two to walk around the park.
Soon it was time for lunch. We had a fantastic 2 hour lunch at the Dimple restaurant at the Daspalla Hotel in Vizag.
After lunch, my 13 year old cousin wanted to visit the Kursura Submarine Museum. This is the only one of its kind in the entire South Asia – a real submarine converted to a museum.
It was neat walking inside the submarine, seeing the captain’s cabin, the regular crew quarters (crawling space !!) and the engine room.
After the museum, we were done with sightseeing for the day. We went back to the resort and had dinner at the onsite restaurant.
Day 3:
We had booked the Andhra Pradesh tourism package for Araku day trip for the next day. What is provided on this package is the train fare to Araku, breakfast (on the train), lunch (at AP Tourism hotel in Araku), bus for sightseeing and a guide for the journey. The journey to Araku from Vizag is done on a train while the return part is on a bus.
The train journey to Araku was beautiful. As the train slowly climbs up the hill, you get a great view of the valley as well as a lot of water-falls on one side. It being the winter season, the water-falls were mostly dry.
There has been a lot of buzz surrounding Araku in the travel circles in India and frankly I was kind of disappointed. After we arrived at Araku, we got in the AP tourism bus and then the first two places the guide took us was a botanical garden and a tribal-people museum. Both were a huge waste of time. There were hardly any variety of trees in the garden to warrant a visit and the tribal museum was boring as hell.
Next we had lunch at AP tourism hotel in Araku which was definitely sub-par. After lunch we were on our way back to Vizag on bus. It got a bit scary at times when the bus was coming downhill on a narrow highway.
The highlight of the trip was the stop at Borra Caves on the way back.
We spent about an hour walking around the caves. There is plenty of space and it is very airy so none of us got any claustrophobic feeling inside the cave.
We reached the resort late at night. I flew back to Kolkata with one of my uncles who had to come back because of a prior engagement. My parents along with the rest took the train back to Kolkata the next night.