Dasara organizing committee is reported to have dropped its proposal to organize ‘heritage walks', on the plea that 1) it took a lot of preparations to put the walk in place; and 2) there were no sponsors for the event.

One would have thought that a walk was the kind of event that needs no big scale sponsorship. As for the organizing efforts that go into it, the Dasara committee need have gone no farther than a Google search to know what it takes to organise and how it is done in other cities - Mumbai, Chennai - through local initiative and voluntary effort.

At MyMysore dot com the idea  has been batted around under - Heritage Walk: Would it work in Mysore ? (click here to access the post). Consensus was that it can, if we go about it in a can-do spirit, instead of shopping for sponsors before making a move.

What emerged in online interaction on this site was the walks are best planned as a civic initiative, in cooperation with local tour operators, the hotel trade and the tourism department.

In fact, the department that has initiated the ‘home-stay’ programme can mobilize these home-owners into organizing walks (in small groups) for their house-guests. It is reported that nearly 20 house-owners are registered with the tourism dept. for home-stay programme. Enterprising home-owners  could hire guides - college students - to conduct guided walks for guests, on weekends.

On a more organized scale reputed hoteliers such as P V Giri of Siddharth could organize heritage walks for hotel guests. In planning these walks hotel owners can get guidance from heritage commissioner, and knowledgeable long-time Mysore residents such as Krishna Vattam, Gouri Satya, Capt.Anup Murthy, Vijendra Rao and D R Dinakar. Many others with flair for local history and heritage can be identified to plan walks round the city's lesser known heritage sites. Dr. Javeen Nayeem has even charted routes for a couple of theme-based walks.

Snag with our dasara committee was, perhaps, that they looked at heritage walk as just a dasara event; not as an idea that can be institutionalized as an year-round tourism feature.

To quote my friend Vincent D'souza, who is associated with a Chennai walk, On the Mylapore walk in our city, two families, the Natarajans and Nagarajans, always open their doors to people.
Next weekend, a Dutch group will be treated to a 'pongal-vada-coffee' breakfast stop at one of these old houses.
One way to celebrate the best things of our neighbourhoods. Read about how he nicked the idea for the civic initiative in Vincent's blog (Click to access)