Maha Pushkar rush

Hyderabad: Tens of thousands of people flocked the Godavari Maha Pushkaralu taking advantage of the long weekend, causing traffic jams that stretched for several kilometres on the highways both in Telangana and in AP.

 

In contrast, the city wore a deserted a look on Saturday and driving on the traffic-free roads, for a change, was a pleasure. This was seen previously only during  Dasara and Sankranti, when families went home.

 

All roads leading to the Godavari river, starting from Basar in Nizamabad district in Telangana to Antaravedi in West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh were chock-a-bloc with vehicles. The situation was so bad that Telangana minister T. Harish Rao got down to pushing stranded cars and regulating traffic while Andhra Pradesh Speaker Kodela Siva Prasada Rao had to return home owing to the traffic heading to Rajahmundry.

 

All vehicles, other than RTC buses, were being stopped 2-5 km from the Pushkar ghats in both states to avoid overcrowding in the towns. Highways leading to Karimnagar and Nizamabad were the worst-affected. The Rayapatnam-Choppandadi and Kataram-Kaleshwaram stretches tested the patience of motorists. In Adilabad, vehicles were stranded for 6 km at Mancherial and there was a long queues of vehicles at the Indalwai toll plaza on National Highway 44.

 

The traffic jams stretched to 10 km on the Chennai-Kolkata highway leading to Rajahmundry. At the entry point of the Godavari districts, vehicles were inching ahead at snail’s pace. Many of these people stopped at any place they could along the river, ghat or no ghat, and had their holy dip.

 

Even after reaching the ghats in Rajahmundry, people had to wait for long hours for their holy dip. Those who intended to perform rituals found that there was a shortage of priests. 

The most chaotic scenes were witnessed at the stations, with the railways clearly failing to anticipate the rush. 

 

At bus terminals, people scrambled in through the windows to ‘book’ seats for their families as crowds milled around the vehicles, eager to get even standing space to their destinations.