Bhubaneswar: For the first time in the city, the heritage scene Saturday seemed rejuvenated with two heritage walks in two circuits on a single day.
While the 9th Monks, Caves and Kings at Khandagiri happened in the morning, a special Ekamra Walks Old Town Circuit was organised in the afternoon for the delegates of the IHCN conference, being held at Infosys by Orissa Government, IHCN and UNESCO.
While 40 people, including six students of Indian Institute of Tourism and Travel Management (ITTM), Bhubaneswar, and two IIM Bangalore pass-out couple (husband and wife) participated in the morning heritage walk, 20 people from the conference, including noted architects, planners, urban designers, artists and students and faculty members of different architecture colleges and administrators joined the heritage walk in the evening.
Kiran Joshi, Chitrakara School of Planning and Architecture; Chandra Shova Shakya, Head Heritage and Culture Conservation Section of Lathipur Metropolitan City, Nepal; Dr Garyfalia Palaiologou, Lecture in Architecture from Loughborough University, England; Dr Ester Steekelenburg, Director, Urban Discovery, Hong Kong; were some notable members of the Special Ekamra Walks.
Guide Satyaswarup Mishra explained them the details with the hints that how there is an influence of Jain, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies in the images of our temples of Ekamra Kshetra as the area was known in the ancient times and how the temple architecture evolved from the 6th Century AD and flourished with distinctive format, i.e. Rekha, Pidha and Khakara types of temples.
The visitors also went to Ekamra Van, the medicinal plant garden on the bank of Bindusagar, which has more than 200 different varieties of rare and other plants. ACF Ashok Kumar Mishra explained the concept, plan and specialty of the medicinal plant garden to the visitors and they spent over an hour in the unique garden.
Gaurav Kedia and Sabia Jindal, husband and wife couple, both from IIM Bangalore Class of 2013 and are from Jharsuguda, said,
“The walk was really amazing and we could see the Twin Hills in a different perspective after today’s heritage walk.”
The Students of IITTM also enjoyed the walk and as tourism students (BBA) they also asked the guide several interesting questions. Pratysha Biswas and Md. Shakil Mandal called the experience ‘unique’.
Satyajit Barun Day, an executive engineer at the local office of Central Public Works Department (CPWD), was also the guest at Monks Caves and Kings. He enjoyed it so much that he said he would invite other friends to the heritage walks of the city. PNN