A meeting on the progress of Ekamra Walks, city’s weekly engagement with the monuments in the Heritage District, was held on Thursday under the chairmanship of Tourism Director Nitin B Jawle.
It was decided that during the coming Ekamra Walks on Sunday, visitors, guests and officials from hotels, tour operators and associations will take part to have a real feel of the event so that they can translate its importance and essence and market it with the niche-tourists, who would be interested to see and listen about the rich heritage treasure of the Temple City.
Hotel and tour operators also emphasized quality guides so that apart from just doing the work as normal guides, they must have an interest in local temple architecture, temple construction style and the essence of the typical temple building formulae of the Kalingan empire.
They also proposed that city-based guides must come and take part in the Ekamra Walks and learn from their seasoned and senior counterparts.
While the Tourism Director called for collective efforts by the hoteliers and tour operators to popularise, market and brand the Ekamra Walks as an event, he appreciated the roles of Bhubaneswar
Municipal Corporation and Bhubaneswar Development Authority to ensure logistics to make the event a successful one and making the area cleaner.
He also mentioned how during the Ekamra Walks last week travellers from US, Kerala and West Bengal came and enjoyed quality time trailing our heritage monuments and had a look at the traditional temple kitchen at Ananta Vasudev, besides other things.
Inviting other operators and patrons for organisning such events in future, the Tourism Director said, “In future the weekly event can take shape of an everyday event and even multiple tours could be organised on a single day as per demand. He, however, called for a community involvement in the activities to make it more enjoyable and marketable for the tourists. Once the Kotitirtheswar lane is ready it will also be a part of the event.’’
Deputy director (Tourism) Utpal Pati said there is a grand plan to document the event through various publications and use of communication tools to attract more and more participants from hotels, tour operating agencies and proposed extended route plans for serious and young visitors, who want to walk an extra mile or more and have a glimpse of more monuments.’
A tour operator also suggested that popular events like ‘Aarti’ in Varanasi and Puri could also be organised on the banks of Bindusagar to make the walk more enjoyable even during evening hours in the summer seasons.