Summary: You know Vijayawada as a tourist destination and as the place for pilgrims. But, do you know that place.

The city of Vijayawada has many attractions and many retail giants have added more flavour to the already scented city. The city has now turned out to be the biggest shopping hub in the entire south coastal Andhra. This has become possible because of the many new high-end textile showrooms and malls, besides consumer goods companies have recently bombarded this city with huge publicity. The great thing about the retail outlets in this city is that they have brought with them a whole lot of items that too within the reach of all segments of shoppers. In the recent past, many huge names in the consumer goods, cosmetics, jewellery and textile niche has hit this city.

Traditional textile hub:

Even though, some years ago (i.e.) around 1990s, it experienced a slowdown in the textile industry, it is now reclaiming her status as a traditional textile hub with modern features. In the year 2008, many popular brands in the textile industry entered the city.

Big malls:

Not just for shopping of textile, but many popular malls have established their branches to add a new sheen to the lifestyle habits of the locals.

Early 1970s and 80s:

During this period, people visited this city from many villages and towns in Krishna, West Godavari and Guntur Districts towards the chief shopping destination Besant Road. During those periods, big names like Chillapalli, Chandana was ruling the market and many top players started to enter the city and each one of them gathered in single road, thereby turning this place to be major shopping hub for people from different districts.

Present scenario:
In the present scenario, shopping is taking place on a much higher scale on Bandar Road, which is very huge when compared to what happened previously in Besant Road. Earlier, for branded items, people had to visit to Hyderabad and Chennai, but now this trend has vanished and they are able to find branded items under textile, jewellery and many other niches right on Vijayawada itself.

Ring road:
Ring road is yet another shopping destination now with great names like Spencers and Shoppers Shop located in this second hub for shoppers in Vijayawada.

Not just for shoppers, but also for foodies:

The city has some popular hotels like Babai hotel, but with many outlets, the city has many types of eateries to offer. Nowadays, it is found that more fast food outlets are developing as against fine-dine restaurants. These eateries offer foods at an affordable cost, making them the ideal choice for people in middle and lower income groups. Where should an individual eat when reaching Vijayawada? Let us explore the answer for this question here

A few years ago, when this question was asked, people took some time to answer the question. Once can find more than a dozen of eateries to fill up the stomach. In addition to Babai Hotel at Gnadhinagar with the traditional flavour offers the best idlies for which many celebrities are ardent fans, there is also the most popular Modern Cafe on Besan Road, popular for dosas.

The Food Lounge at Mogulrajpuram and many other restaurants has brought in the international cuisines to Vijayawada. With many such great restaurants, the city offers people with the best tasting foods to dine out.

The latest trend is the Night Food Court Starts at Indira Gandhi Municipal Stadium In Vijayawada from 10.00 PM to 2.00 AM

Earlier, only youngsters were visiting restaurants for birthday and other occasions. But, now families hit the restaurants not just during weekends, during weekdays too. This is a good thing for people operating in the food and hospitality business in Vijayawada.

Summary: When you are intending to take your food in a historical hotel in Vijayawada, make it a point to visit Babai Hotel.

Babai Hotel is actually a landmark of Vijayawada known for their mouth-watering dishes and octogenarian customers. Yes, this hotel has a longer existence. The hotel has been around from around 1950s. When walking down the memory lane one of the regular customers, who is at his 80s reminds that the hotel was serving around just a dozen of customers at a time with its little space.

The owner of the hotel Mr.Patruni Samba Murthy was addressing each of his customers as Babai, which means uncle regardless of their age. This hotel is popular for its idlies and many of their customers were and still are slaves for the tasty idlies offered at this hotel. Earlier, idly and pesarattu were the only items available for breakfast at this hotel and generally the breakfast time closed at 8 am, after which it was not possible to get the tiffin. Now, let us get into some interesting facts about this historical hotel, which still functions in the city with similar mouth-watering dishes as earlier.

Inspirational name:

The actual year of establishment of this hotel is 1942 and Patruni Samba Murthi was the first owner, who became popular as ‘Babai’ to every customer. Due to the tasty dishes, the customers were paying more as compared to their actually bill amount. Babai passed away in the year 1985 and the hotel came to his nephew, Chanti. But, Chanti found it highly hard to maintain the name and fame brought to this hotel by Babai. But, he still managed to do it.

Brand recognition:

When the hotel came to the hands of the successors of Chanti, they completely renewed the building and the atmosphere was completely changed and they added few more foods like pongal, podi dosa, masala dosa and Godhumma ravva upma to their recipes. But, the taste never deteriorated and the new management managed to offer the best taste as earlier to their customers.

Gained popularity among celebrities:

Many great personalities from the Telugu film industry like NTR, ANR, Savitri and even politicians continued to be frequent visitor to relish the tasty dishes offered at Babai hotel. Even though, the foods were cheap for celebrities at Babai hotel, they had great liking for the foods served in this hotel as against visiting five star hotels.

The tasty recipes continue:

Even though, several years have passed by, Babai Hotel still continues to maintain the taste of their idlies, chutneys with coconut, ginger and chilli powder along with ghee and butter.

NTRs special attachment to the hotel:

The former chief minister of the state NT Ramarao and he himself once served the idlies of this hotel to great national leaders like Atal Bihari Vajpayee during Mahanadu in 1988.

Recently, the hotel was completely renovated and was opened after a short close for renovation work. V. Lakshmi Narasimha Rao, a nephew of ‘Babai’ and who is known as Chanti, is managing the affairs ever since ‘Babai’ passed away in 1985.

After renovation, the hotel has now come up as a Ground+2 building at the same 130-sq. yard site. The ground floor is ‘self-service’ section, though a couple of tables would be arranged there to make it easy for elders. The top floors would have about 25-30 seating capacity each.

Summary: When you visit Vijayawada, you are sure to cross by the Benz Circle and let us gather some details about this traffic circle.

Benz Circle is one of the busiest chowks in the city of Vijayawada. As this place acts as the intersection between NH5 and NH9, you are sure to see this place, when you travel around Vijayawada during your vacation by road. It is one of the prominent landmarks in the city and it is located in the Bandar Road.

History:

Earlier, a branch of Benz Company was functioning in this place. Even though, this company is not present there, people refer this place with the name of the Benz Company as Benz Circle. There is also a bus stop near the circle and this stop is called as ‘Benz Company Busstop’ even today.

Traffic:

This place holds importance as the busiest junction in the city. Reports state that nearly 57000 vehicles cross this place on a daily basis.

Value of property:

After the announcement of Vijayawada/Amaravati as state capital, the land value near Benz Circle has hit a new height. This new height has turned this place to be the richest in the entire state, which includes the common state capital, Hyderabad.

Heavy traffic:

When analysing the reason behind the increasing traffic, it is found that vehicles from different directions intersect at this place. It is stated that for every motorists, it takes around two to three minutes to cross this junction due to heavy traffic.

Traffic Police officials say that vehicular traffic has increased considerably over the past couple of years in this area and in addition to this reason, many commercial establishments also popup on either side of the junction to add up to the chaos. This busy roundabout links the highways that connect Hyderabad, Chennai, Machilipatnam and Visakhapatnam.

Summary: If you are planning for a shopping trip when staying at Vijayawada, the place to head to is Besant Road.

Besant Road is stated to be the busiest road in Vijayawada as it is the trade center that always bustles with activities and trade. Even though, the road is the trade center for long, it has recently turned into a pivot of commercial shift.

Modern eateries:

Some of the modern restaurants of the city are located in Besant Road. So, foodies in the city and even those who are well-aware of the culture of Vijayawada make a point to visit this place to pamper themselves with some of the tasty dishes.

The famous Andhra evening snaks Punugulu, Bajji, Batina curry, Pani Puri also, can be found here. And don’t forget to have an ice cream or a shake at Ravindra Cool Drinks.

Movie halls:

The Besant road is also filled with some of the best vibrant movie halls. So, it is the place for movie buffs as well, besides those who have great interest towards foods. Not just Telugu films, films in multiple languages are released in the movie halls in Besant Road.

Quench your interest towards shopping:

Not just for movie buffs and foodies, this road can quench the thirst for shopping enthusiast as well with a line up of multiple shops. Any item right from costumes to cosmetics can be purchased from the shopping complex in this road. Another attractive feature is the affordability offered by shops to shopping enthusiasts.

So, when you have a shopping list, make a point to visit Besant Road to quench your thirst for shopping, besides movie watching and of course to quench your hunger. Also, you can easily reach this road as it is located just at a distance of 1.5 kms from Vijayawada Railway Station.