My last diary post was about how terrible we were feeling without any movie releases, visiting the same malls, and most of the times landing up at the same restaurants/pubs..I just broke the monotony last week! God Bless..

We went to a beach in Andhra Pradesh, 350 kms from Hyderabad. We have been in Hyderabad for more than 3 years, but we got to know about this beach only about a fortnigh before. We had mixed feelings of guilt and excitement at the same time. Guilt because we were sooo lazy not to discover this in 3 years, excited because we had some NEW place to go.
The beach is called Suryalanka Beach. As I mentioned earlier, it is about 350 km from Hyderabad. Having found the destination we scouted for the route. Basic "googling" came in handy. A few posts guided us on the route to the place. However, a colleague had been there and she gave us some useful informaion, including do's and don'ts.
Here are some:
1 Book for a cottage at the beach, before thinking of travelling there. Reason: The beach has only 12 cottages, owned by APTDC. Weekends they are full, and there is NO other alternative to halt at the beach.
So, we booked a room (Rs.1350/-) for a day (25-Apr-09) from the Secunderabad Yatri Nivas. (Yatri Nivas is the AP Govt. owned travel and tourism center in HYDBD)

2. Get a route map before you drive down. We went scouting for a route map. A post on team-bhp site helped.
We found out the route to the beach. We decided we will go via Vijaywada. Got a few snacks and started off at 4:30 am from Hydbd.
Here is the route we took.
Miyapur-->>DilsukhNagar (40 Km)
DilsukhNagar-->>Vijaywada (260 km)
Vijaywada--Guntur (30 Km)
Guntur--Bapatla (45 Km) (Take a left turn at HIMA Petrol Pump)
Bapatla-->> Suryalanka Beach (10 Km)

Hyderabad to Vijaywada is the NH9, and the 50 Km drive just before reaching Vijaywada is EXCELLENT. The road is very very good and you will clock 120kmph easily in your vehicle.
It is advisable to leave Hydbd early in the morning, so you can avoid a lot of APSRTC Volvo Buses coming into Hydbd from Vijaywada. And trust me, truck drivers have better driving sense and respect for other vehicles.

Since, this was our first 300+ km trip, we were very very careful and were not racing agains time, it was a pleasure trip.
We reached VJWD by 11 am. Took a few snaps enroute and then headed of to Guntur and then to Bapatla. We reached by 1 pm.
We drove straight into the beach, this is one of the few beaches where you can take your vehicle to the shore. We spend some time there and headed to our room. It was scorching heat and the humidity was badoutside. But the thrill of the journey and being in a beach in AP was a great feeling.

The food wasn't very good but manageable. Evening we were on the beach again. And we planned to visit the Buddha Stupa in Amaravati (40km from Vijaywada). Next day we started off at 9am, reached VJWD by 11am. From VJWD to Amaravati the drive is through green fields and therefore the scenic beauty is excellent. We reached the Buddha Stupa at 1 pm. The statue is an imposing structure and a must visit.

Our return journey began at 2 pm from VJWD and we reached HYDBD by 8 pm.

A very happy, enjoyable, and safe trip. Thanks to God!
Here I am again, wondering when will hey release movies. We have booked tickets for "Confessions of a Shopaholic" for tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.
Avinash

The Multiplexes and the distributors have locked horns. Not sure if both of these parties are feeling the pain, but as a atleast-one-movie-per-weekend animals myself and my wife are waiting for the horns to unlock.
About two weeks before we thought they would unlock. Why did we think so? The media splashed photos of Aamir Khan and SRK bent over each other discussing the issue. But no, we were fooled, the media took us for a drive and then told us that it AK and SRK were discussing about their next big releases "3 Idiots" and "My Name is Khan". Ok, so we latched on to that story..but no we were fooled again...(We are looking like easy-to-make-fools now). The media said, they did not discuss his in their meeting...they are fighting guerilla warfare on his topic and AK is hell bent on releasing his movie to time wih SRK's and trump him again-like he did with Ghajini.
This guerilla warfae is being fought from different locations. While SRK is playing his cards from South Africa's cricket stadiums along with his children (he even managed special leave for his children o be wih him for the IPL) AK has packed off for a holiday with his kids too to some location.

Ok, here I lost the topic..getting back to it..Multilplexes say they want their share and will pay distributors variable pay depending on how tthe movie fares, disributors want their fixed profit margin. But they aren't for a momen thinking about the easy-to-fool-moviegoers. The expect us to pay Rs 200-500/- per person per ticket even for those really bad movies, and hey have their margins already shoveled off. How fair is that.? Why dont they get into a ticket pricing act. Price the tickets based on X Y Z parameters, star value, graphics, stroyline, etc. whatever..We easy-to-make-fools aren't ready to pay the same price for a "Deshdrohi" and for a "Taare Zameen Par". But we dont have an option, no one is talking to us..no one is bothered. For that POV, the hero in Deshdrohi and Aamir Khan are equally good or equally bad..
Anyways, the so-called reps of he industry wont read my diary and will not heed any atenttion.
So, until then...let the horns be locked and we will get back to watching the more entertaining IPL matches.