Three-day Araku Utsav ‘Chali’ kicks off with marathon, cultural performances, food stalls

Araku Utsav 'Chali' kicks off with marathon, cultural performances, food stalls, paragliding, and tribal art showcase.

The three-day Araku Utsav tiled ‘Chali’ began on a grand note in the Araku Valley of Alluri Sitharama Raju district on Friday.

A 5k marathon organised early in the morning heralded the inaugural. Around 300 youth and college-going students, including girls, enthusiastically participated in the run, braving the cold weather conditions, from Araku Railway Station to the event’s main venue, Government Degree College Grounds. District Collector A.S. Dinesh Kumar, Joint Collector Abhishek Goud, Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA) Paderu, Project Officer, V. Abishek, along with the police personnel flagged off the run. The officials created awareness about Sankalpam, the ongoing campaign against drugs. Later, the Collector gave away prizes to the winners of the marathon. Due to the ongoing Uttarandhra Teachers MLC poll code, no political representatives attended the event.

Later, the festival officially began at the main venue, when the Collector played the drums to kickstart the festival. Instead of ribbon cutting to inaugurate the food stalls, the Collector chose to open them by pounding the paddy grains, in a traditional way. The stalls include sweaters from Nagaland, embroidery stall from Araku, decoration items by Manipur, bangles stall by Rajasthan, multimetal staff by Chhattisgarh, toys made of ‘Lakka’ from Chompi, clay toys from Madugula, Van Dhan Vikas Kendras (VDVK) stalls from Seethampeta, Rampachodavaram and Paderu ITDAs. This apart, a few tribals from Vanjangi and other places have put up stalls to depict the culture, traditions, attire and foods of the tribes from the region. All the stalls were set up in ‘thatched house’ setup. An amusement park has also been set up at the venue.

For the first time in the Agency areas, ‘paragliding’ and helicopter tourism rides started as part of the utsav, in the valley.

The opening ‘Carnival Parade’ was organised from Araku Tribal Museum. Shedding their inhibitions for a while, officials including the Collector, ITDA PO, Joint Collector, Sub Collector and others, mingled freely with the tribal artistes and danced in gay abandon. A number of tribal folk artistes including Basthar Band, Thoda Dance, Ghond Tribal Dance, Thappeta Gullu, Kommu Koyya Dance, Savara Dance, Manipur dance, a large number of students from the tribal areas. Officials too enthusiastically took part in the event. Different types of cultural performances including dhimsa, kuchipudi and others were organised at the main venue, during the evening.

Though there were good number of tourists, a few officials opined that the number could have been much more, had the utsav was organised before Sankranti festival.

Speaking to the local media, Collector A.S. Dinesh Kumar said that the main motto of the event is to showcase tribal culture, give good experience to the visitors and also promote Araku. He said that as part of the utsav, a wide variety of programmes were planned to enthral the tourists.