Walking tours gaining prominence

› Today, close to 90% of my walk participants are those who have some long term association with the city.

ALISHA SADIKOT, heritage walk guide

NEWDELHI: People want to understand the cities they live in and it is not just about hidden histories, but also about things they have seen every day and want to take a better look at them, said Alisha Sadikot, who has been conducting walking tours in Mumbai since 2004, at the Hindustan Times Tourism Conclave on Friday.

At a session titled Discover Your Cities, Sadikot said in 2004, no one was talking about heritage walks. “...now am doing it full time. There is so much interest that it is difficult to keep up with the demand for walking tours,” said Sadikot. “In 2004, it was only outbound tourists who would come for the tours. Today, close to 90% of my walk participants are those who have some long term association with the city.”

Hindustan Times features writer Mayank Austen Soofi and Aliyeh Rizvi, who is the founder and creative director of The Native Place in Bengaluru, were also part of the session.

Soofi said more and more people were doomed to live in places like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, which are difficult cities.

“However, how to escape from the city? I like being a tourist in my own city. Every day I wake up in the morning and pretend to myself that I do not know the city and I just get out to walk around,” he said.

“They need not be a Humayun’s tomb or other big monuments, rather the places we see everyday like the pavements, coffee shops, malls.”

Speaking about the challenges of telling stories of their cities while negotiating the boundaries between the outsider and the insider, Sadikot said that heritage walks are not just about looking at the past of a city. “It is interesting to uncover the layers and all tourists want a layered conversation wherein they want to know what is happening today and what is likely to happen tomorrow.”

Rizvi said in Bengaluru, they have no monuments of scale that are in other cities.

“Our intangible heritage is what is asked for and celebrated. When we design tours, we include experiences like visits to the looms and conversations with the weavers. People have already given us the feedback that because they have experienced, they know and care,” Rizvi said.