Not many follow the compass pointing north

Official inertia, lack of facilities keep tourists from exploring north Karnataka’s bounty

If you were to trust the Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation’s website, you may end up thinking the famous Guru Nanak Jhira Sahib gurudwara in Bidar is the Chaluvaraya Swamy temple in Melukote instead.

Embarrassing gaffes like this, along with poor information about the cultural significance of monuments, access to the place or food and accommodation, serve only to hurt tourism, especially the rich heritage destinations in north Karnataka.

The poor quality of the website is only a small example. Monuments, pilgrimage centres, forests, mountains and rivers in the 11 districts beyond the Tungabadhra, present a rich variety of attractions, but a range of problems — lack of protection for monuments, connectivity, infrastructure and tourist amenities, trained guides, coordination between key agencies like the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Tourism Department, and private players — have rendered most of them invisible in tourist itineraries.

Access and maintenance are other issues. There are over 30 monuments inside the Bidar fort, but the ASI has blocked access to most of them to protect them from vandals. Most ASI monuments have no guards or guides. This is the case with most monuments in Vijayapura, Ballari, Belagavi and others.

The road quality all across north Karnataka gets from bad to worse, and the lack of sanitation only adds to tourists’ woes. For instance, Saudatti in Belagavi district, that receives lakhs of pilgrims, does not have toilets for women.

Official apathy is also reflected in the Tourism Department’s organisational set-up. While Mysuru and Bengaluru revenue divisions have 11 assistant directors, Belagavi and Kalaburagi together have just six, said B.G. Shetkar, president of the Bidar Chamber of Commerce and Industries.

All these factors have hit footfalls. For instance, only 2,718 of the 18 lakh tourists who visited the historically rich Vijayapura district (previously Bijapur) last year were international visitors. Though the government has recently been promoting district utsavs to attract tourists, most are neither well-planned nor marketed. The Belagavi Utsav, for example, does not attract the crowd that is seen in places like Hampi or Mysuru.

French historian Klaus Rotzer, who has been visiting monuments in the northern districts for over three decades, said showcasing a monument would not only protect the country’s heritage, but also create jobs. Abdul Gani Imaratwale, a chronicler of Vijayapura, pointed out that guides with foreign language skills in Madhya Pradesh are earning up to Rs. 3,000 a day. Khaji Arshed Ali, former MLC, felt working with governments of Maharashtra and Telangana that border north Karnataka districts, would help too.

There have been debates galore from pre-unification times till now on how the 11 districts beyond the Tungabadhra in Karnataka remain neglected. Ironically, even tourist destinations and heritage sites seem to be victims of that same neglect.