Beach festival kicked off at Panambur beach in Mangalore on Friday, thereby painting festive and gala mood in the city.

The kites from Team Mangalore flew across the sky marking the beginning of the programme. The entire beach took a busy look as huge crowd poured into the beach area and the stalls of various eatables and games adorned the premises.

Zorb ride

Festival had several new adventurous games, beckoning Mangaloreans to put on their adventure shoes.

It is for the first time in the history of Mangalore that mangaloreans get the joy of riding inside a Zorb (Zorb is a huge transparent ball with opening on one side. The individuals are safely tied to the wall of the zorb and the zorb is manually pushed to rotate). This zorb has been brought to Mangalore by the Outback Adventures. As adventurous as it sounds, Mangalore City Corporation Joint Commissioner and Assistant Commissioner Sameer Shukla plunged into the zorb to take a ride.

After the ride, Mr Shukla summed up his experience as ‘great, very exciting and thrilling’. The zorb ride costs Rs 100 per person.

On the other hand there were young adventurers going Kayaking (Rs 75 per person for 20 minutes), rafting (Rs 50 per person for 20 minutes), speed boating (Rs 100 per person for 15 minutes and banana boating (Rs 100 per person for 15 minutes) brought in by Sultan Battery Water Sports and Adventure Centre.

An adventure stall has also been put up by Outback Adventures in the premises with all camping gears.

For all those wanting to tickle their tongue with some lip-smacking Mangalorean delicacies then Mogaveera Vyavasthapaka Mandali has done arrangements for that too. At affordable prices one can taste authentic Mangalorean sea food delicacies such as Mangalorean ‘Sukka’ and ‘Gashi’ of a variety of fishes, prawn biryani, fish fries etc at the sea food counter opened here.

At about 6.30 pm some of the selected dance troupes from the district staged a dance show. On February 2 at 4.30 am a discourse by the Art of Living Mangalore will be held.

Swimming and traditional boat race will commence at 10 am and at 10.30 am beach volleyball (men’s) and beach throwball (Women) competition will be held.

At 4 pm Team Mangalore will be back with another kite show and at 6.30 pm renowned Tulu, Konkani and Beary artists will perform cultural programmes.

Traffic diversion

In view of beach festival, the movement of heavy vehicles have been banned between Mangalore-Surathkal between 1 pm and 10 pm.

The vehicles can ply via Nanthoor-Vamanjoor-Kaikamba-Gurpura-Bajpe-Kinnigoli-Mulki, informed a press release.