A spectacular glimpse of what’s to come at Indian Navy’s two major events in Visakhapatnam

Families, photography enthusiasts and artists will be among the tens of thousands of people expected to gather at the Beach Road to witness the events

The ships are lined up in columns along the Visakhapatnam coast; the Beach Road wears a sparkling new look with every nook and corner getting a makeover. It is a grand spectacle in the coastal city as Visakhapatnam gears up to host two major events — the Presidential Fleet Review (PFR) to be held on February 21 and MILAN Naval Exercise that will be held from February 24 to March 4.

Families, photography enthusiasts and artists will be among the thousands of people expected to gather at the Beach Road to witness the events.

About 50 ships and an equal number of aircraft will participate in the PFR. In the run-up to the events, R K Beach has been witnessing rehearsals in full swing.

Ban Nanda, a photography enthusiast, plans to spend as long as he can on the beach road taking it all in. “It’s an incredible opportunity to witness the action from the coast, see all the ships together in a formation — you never see anything like this,” he says. Armed with his camera and lenses, Nanda has been shooting the rehearsals in the late afternoons and evenings in eager anticipation of the main event days. In 2016 when Visakhapatnam hosted the International Fleet Review, Nanda's panel of 20 images won him an international award. "I am equally excited to capture the action this time as well. It is a big opportunity to be in Visakhapatnam during this time of the year to witness two major events of the Indian Navy one after the other," says Nanda.

Dentist and photography enthusiast Suresh Gorantla has been waking up before sunrise for the past one week to capture what he describes as "spectacular scenes" of the sun rising over the coast with the magnificent ships in the foreground. One of his best shots is a sun rising over INS Tarangini, the first sail training ship of the Indian Navy. "I took my time to get the best possible view of the sunrise over the ship. It wasn't a perfectly clear morning. I drove down to the Naval Coastal Battery to get the exact composition I had framed in my mind," says Suresh.

The skies have been hazy for a while now, but that did not deter 75-year-old K Bhaskar Rao from lugging around his huge lenses in an attempt to capture the best possible view of Sumitra, the Presidential yacht, on Friday morning when the full rehearsals of the PFR was held. Standing on an elevation of a high-rise building on the Beach Road, Bhaskar Rao spent two hours focusing his lenses on the Presidential Yacht, in which the President will review all participating ships by ‘steaming past’ them. His friend Gadu Satyanarayana is excited about the PFR for a different reason. A member of the Numismatic and Philatelic Society of Visakhapatnam, he has been collecting all the commemorative stamps of PFR through the years. “I am looking forward to add the PFR 2022 commemorative stamp to my collection,” he adds.