Odisha woos tourists by hardselling 3,000-year-old temple architecture

Odisha capital, Bhubaneswar, is today a model of livability as is evident by the city’s stable growth rate in the recent decades. It has been able to capitalise upon its assets — be it tangible and intangible heritage or its strategic location — to attract the attention of tourists.

Founded during the Kalinga Empire more than 3,000 years ago, the city boasts of a cluster of magnificent temples, constituting Odisha temple architecture from its early beginning to its culmination. To showcase the excellence of the city’s architecture, the state government has recently started organsing heritage walks covering all the major temples for tourists on every Sunday.

Held under the banner of Ekamra Walks, as many as 34 such events have been organised so far. As a part of the event, the tourists are taken to Mukteswar temple, Parsurameswar temple, Sampurna Jaleswar temple, Kptitirtheswar temple, Bindusagar, Ananta Vasudev temple, Old Dharmasala, Lingaraj temple, Chitrakarini temple, Sari Deula, Mohini temple, Parikrama of Bindusagar and Vaitaal temple, besides the picturesque Ekamra Van, a temple garden.

Trained guides narrate the style of architecture, history and stories associated with each and every temple to the tourists.

Last Sunday, a 15-member team from University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and 90 students of Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, participated in the event in the old city. Intermittent rains could not spoil their spirit hopping from one temple to another and capturing the finer works of the edifices in their camera lenses. Prof. Annapurna Pandey of the Cultural Anthropology department at UCSC said the experiencing heritage along with students was excellent and everyone enjoyed it. “The students of UCSC will be staying here till September and will work on a project titled ‘Globalisation, Technology and Development’. They are from social science and natural

science background at UCSC,” she said.

Jonika, a student said, “I’m so happy. I have no words to describe the experience. It would be forever engraved in the hearts of all participants of the UCSC.”

Mayank Choudhury, a first-year B.Tech student

from IIT, Bhubaneswar termed his experience at Ekamra Walks as a “great feeling to know our heritage”. Amit Kumar, another first-year B.Tech student said, “I am happy that we are surrounded by so many monuments. We should preserve them to encash on

their tourism potential.”

R. Pratyusha, yet another student of first-year B.Tech said, “We have enjoyed a lot during the Ekamra Walks and would like to explore the heritage sites some more.” “Through Ekamra Walks, we have succeeded to showcase our rich temple

architecture to the outside world. We expect there would be a rise in tourist flow when people visiting these temples go back and tell relatives and friends about the experiences here,” said Bhubaneswar Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.