The Mighty Museums

An aircraft and a submarine that once heroically served the country, are now museums that have become a major tourist attraction in Andhra Pradesh. More people have visited the Kursura Submarine Museum this year than ever. There was a record of 6.40 lakh visitors this year which is almost two lakhs more than the number of visitors in 2017. The recently opened TU 142 Aircraft Museum also saw over 6.81 lakh visitors in its inaugural year, since it was thrown open to the public on December 28, 2017.

Curator of the Aircraft Museum Dileep Kumar proudly states how in December 2018 alone 83, 722 people visited. INS Kursura proved her might in the Navy for 31 as a submarine. She was commissioned in Riga in Erstwhile USSR on December 19, 1969 and played a significant role in the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

War veteran

Now a walk-through muesum, visitors can get acquainted with the war vessel’s insides that was hitherto forbidden to the civillians. People can see the torpedoes, boiler room and other weaponry of the submarine. The museum is out of the sea, but stationed very close to the waves it rode not too long ago. “The location of the museums play a crucial role in their popularity. Any person who comes to Visakhapatnam is bound to visit the Beach Road. Once here, the two mammoths are not easy to ignore,” laughs G Phaniraj, curator of the Kursura Submarine Museum.

Allowing a similar experience is the TU 142 aircraft that has also served the Navy with distinction for 29 years. It is stationed right opposite the submarine museum. Visitors can walk through this long-range maritime patrol aircraft, which specialises in detecting and destroying submarines. Apart from showcasing weaponry, the museums also give visitors an idea of the work done by the military personnel on them.

The Eastern Naval Command that is headquartered at Visakhapatnam plays a significant role in familiarising civilians with the defence life. For 32-year-old tourist Srilatha Iyer, a walk through the Kursura museum reveals the hardships of men at the sea. “Though the submarine looks so huge, the actual space to move and sleep is so less. The 20 minutes that I spent inside the submarine, I could not stop thinking how hard it must be when the submarine sails. A grand salute to the defence personnel for bearing it all for the nation,” she says.

Mukesh Kumar Meena, secretary of tourism and youth welfare believes that the city with its scenic coastline and hills has the potential to be an international tourist destination. He states that the tourist footfall in the last four years has doubled.

From faraway lands

In the holiday season serpentine queues are visible in front of the museums. “The maximum turnout is during the holiday season, especially dussehra and Pongal. Summer holidays are busy times too,” he adds.

Phaniraj says that most of the tourists come from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Karnataka. “ Though the number of visitors has gone up significantly, there is not much increase in tourists from abroad,” he observes.

The museums have also got a fillip thanks to AP Tourism Board’s efforts to project Visakhapatnam as a holiday destination. Events like the recently-concluded Visakha Utsav play a significant role in directing tourist traffic to the museums too.

“During the three days of Visakha Utsav, the museum had more than 4,000 visitors every day. This is almost a 40% increase than the number of visitors we normally have,” says Phaniraj. According to Dileep, on January 15 the museum recorded the highest in a single day since its inauguration — over 5,500 visitors.