Crowd surge hits Chennai beaches, parks – Times of India

CHENNAI: Thousands of people thronged city parks and beaches on the first Sunday since they were reopened to public. Rain did not deter visits to zoo, children’s park, snake park, and visitors covered every inch of Marina. The leisure spots were declared open from last Monday.
Vandalur zoo welcomed 7,500 visitors and Children’s Park saw 3,285 visitors on Sunday. The footfalls were higher by 1,000 to 1,500 at the two spots than Saturday.
A senior wildlife official said safety protocols such as temperature checks and mandatory use of sanitisers were followed despite the high number of visitors.
The cloudy skies and the drizzle were no deterrent, said executive chairman of the Chennai Snake Park, S Paulraj. “Till afternoon, the arrival of visitors to both the children’s park and snake park was less. But the numbers surged in the evening,” he said.
Similarly, crowd swelled in the evening in the Vandalur zoo too, said a senior zoo official.
Weekend drives on ECR were back with visits to Muttukadu and Mudaliarkuppam boat houses. A few monuments in Mamallapuram had to be closed as there was a huge number of visitors and the ticket quota for the day was sold by afternoon. An official source said for the first time since monuments in Mamallapuram were reopened on June 28, the number of tickets sold online reached its cap of 5,000 on Sunday.
Following this, the heritage sites maintained by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) were closed for15 minutes. Tickets to admit another 800 visitors were issued offline and closed for the day. According to official sources with ASI, only 5,000 tickets are issued a day online and paper (offline) tickets are not usually issued. Sunday was an exception considering the huge crowd that was waiting, the source said.
The Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC) boathouses at Muttukadu and Mudaliarkuppam were also reopened after a break since May due to the second wave of the pandemic. TTDC sources said 1,640 people took boatrides in Muttukadu on Sunday, a number almost equal to pre-Covid times. Meanwhile, 480 took boatrides in Mudaliarkuppam, almost double the pre-Covid number, the source added.