Vizag: After 9 months, tourist footfall at Borra Caves gathers pace

VISAKHAPATNAM: Tourist footfall at Borra Caves has almost returned to pre-Covid-19 levels, said officials with the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC).
B Gowri Sankara Rao, APTDC manager at Borra Caves, said the number of tourists at the spot is limping back to normalcy despite no train facility between Visakhapatnam and Araku, no special tourist buses and few tourists from Odisha, West Bengal and Hyderabad.
“But, despite all these odds, we earned a revenue of Rs 17 lakh and have had 30,000 tourists this month till Sunday (December 6) against an average of 40,000 tourists. This means, that normalcy is returning here. We expect nearly 50,000 tourists from this week till Sankranti,” Sankara Rao told TOI.
The revenue of Rs 17 lakh in the first week of December, Rao said, was earned against just Rs 23 lakh for October, which is also a peak tourist season with Dasara and Diwali holidays.
The tourist spot stayed open on all working days during the period of peak Covid-19 infections. In November, the tourism corporation earned Rs 28 lakh.
On Sunday (December 6) alone, the APTDC earned Rs 6 lakh from nearly 9,000 tourists, the highest in the last nine months.
Tourism department sources said the number of tourists to Borra Caves and neighbouring Araku Valley will increase once train services resume between Visakhapatnam and Araku.
Tourism minister M Srinivasa Rao said they will raise the issue for resumption of train services and the glass-domed coach attached to the train.
A senior railway official at Visakhapatnam headquarters of Waltair division said, “We are ready to operate the trains to Araku if they receive official nod from the higher-ups at Bhubaneswar and the Railway Board at New Delhi.”