Spot report and pics from Viju Mangalore for Daijiworld News Network

Mangalore, Jan 14: The much talked about beach festival organised by the district administration at Panambur as part of Karavali Utsav took off on Friday on a sluggish note. A well-planned show failed to entice the crowds on the first day. 

The event, which was inaugurated, by the DC H V Parshwanath, chairman NMPT Tamilvanan and Mangalore MLA Yogish Bhat was sluggish throughout.

Other than the women's throw ball and volleyball tourney for men, the day did not witness any event as planned.

The men’s tug of war contest has been postponed for today. Food festival and attractive kite exhibition by Team Mangalore never saw the light of the day, as the poor response to the festival gave great disappointments to the organizers.

The regular amount of visitors decorated the beach and made the job of the coast guards easy. The utsav samiti had taken services of the coast guards to be watchful on the swimmers in the sea.

Even the camels, which had left the deserts to entertain the festive crowd, had no takers.

While the stage was set for the evening’s cultural programmes people were found more attracted towards knowing their ‘future’ from the ‘fortune tellers’

The festival was an utter failure, as it even had nothing attractive to children who were engrossed in the welcome waters of the Panambur beach

On duty the police officers took their time out to try some shots with their mobile cameras

But all throughout the lensmen were on their toes as the enchanting sunset kept them busy clicking every minute of it.

Families that entered the unexciting environs at the beach kept to themselves cherishing the moments spent in kiddish play.

A kite festival, tug-of-war, food festival….were the events to be held at the festival. However, the kites never reached the skies, the ropes were never pulled in the tug-of-war contest and the food counters too were few and scattered.

Added to this lukewarm response, the organizers of the cultural programme were seen dilly-dallying over starting the programme as there was not much of a crowd. All one could find was the regular lot of beach visitors and constellations of police personnel.

The beach festival will continue till Jan 15.