Besides learning the temple building architecture and Kalingan style of temple making, the Ekamra Walks, the weekend guided heritage walk of the city, has also becoming an interactive knowledge gathering interface on Odia traditions and culture.
On Sunday, 50 participants of the heritage walk, thus, got to know about traditions behind Mahalaya, the fortnight-long offering for our forefathers, as per Odia traditions.Tour guide Satyaswarup Mishra explaining the age-old tradition of Mahalaya being observed in Ekamra Kshetra.
The heritage walkers encountered hundreds of people gathering along the banks of Bindusagar to offer ``Shradh’’ for their forefathers. The priests were administering ``slokas’’ or holy texts and guiding the rituals in the traditional way. The entire Old Bhubaneswar area was looking crowded, especially around the Bindusagar and the umbrellas of the priests tenting along the banks of the holy water body were creating a beautiful sight for the visitors to capture through their lenses.
lauren Hafford, from Colorado USA, who is on a Fulbright Fellowship to work in the social service organization Gram Vikash to plan and study rural sanitation in Odisha, was very happy to discover the beautiful tradition, people’s love for their culture and the beautiful monuments of the Old City of Bhubaneswar, which is the epitome of the Kalingan temple building style and architecture.
``This is my first visit to Odisha, but I love the city Bhubaneswar as it has a wonderful collage of rich tradition blended with the emerging urban culture with a perfect blend and mix.
It is really an enriching experience to come to Ekamra Walks today. I would be happy to come to more such walks on coming days as I am likely to be in Odisha till May next year,’’ lauren added.
Vikash Seth, from Cuttack, who came to the walk with his little daughter Diya, said it to be magical experience gathering inside the Ekamra Van, the medicinal plant garden along the western coast of Bindusagar lake.’
Well-known conservation expert from Ahmedabad and co-founder of Virasaat-E-Hind Foundation, Jitu Mishra, who was part of the 40th Ekamra Walks today, said ``each time a walker discovers a new thing here at the Old Town area. The experience is nice and enriching.’’ The visitors covered Mukteswar, Parsurameswar, Swarnajaleswar, Kotitirtheswar, Ananta Vasudev, lingaraj, Chitrakarini, Sari, Mohini and Vaitaal temples and Bindusagar, Old Dharmashala and Ekamra Vaan