Sheekha Bureau
Port Blair, Dec 27: The Baratang Ferry, which everyone thought will be a great failure, is now getting tremendous response from locals as well as certain section of tourists.
Although the trip from Port Blair to Baratang has less passengers, mostly because of early morning schedule, but the trip from Baratang to Port Blair is almost full everyday.
The DSS has already declared daily ferries for Baratang Island, which was earlier made thrice a week for some unknown reasons.
As per reports the ferry has become too popular among the local residents of Baratang and Port Blair, who find ferry journey more comfortable than the spine breaking ATR journey.
A certain section of tourists, who are well informed and have done good research, also prefer this ferry. Often foreign nationals also could be seen enjoying journey in this ferry, which includes sailing for nearly 30 minutes in creek covered by mangroves.
But the recent decision of DSS to change the return journey timing of this ferry has left people unhappy. Earlier this ferry used to leave Baratang at 2.30 PM and used to reach Port Blair by 5.15 pm, much before ATR buses. But now after change of timing, this ferry now leaves Baratang at 3.15 PM and reaches Port Blair only by 6.15 PM or 6.30 PM, which is a great loss of valuable time for public and also tourists, who otherwise can use the time for some other useful things.
Many residents of Baratang have requested Andaman Sheekha’s local correspondent to highlight this issue so that the timing of this ferry is again fixed to 2.30 PM.
