‘Time travellers’ set to explore, experience history through tours

Their mission is to revive value systems from the rich past of the Tamil land by bringing history to the present generations.

In February, they will set out on Ottran Paadhai — The Spy’s Trail, a signature tour of the company’s, about which the team explains during this interview.

“Over 20 years, I’ve read a lot about Raja Chola and Rajendra Chola and naturally Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan played a huge role in drawing me towards our region’s bygone eras. We wanted some forum to ensure that people get to know about our rich past and that’s how Heritage Inspired was born,” says Clement Anand, one of the members. Setting aside religion, caste and politics, he wishes that Indians can be proud of their legacy and draw inspiration from it to better theirlives in the present.

Before each travel, participants are given an e-book about what they could expect and a brief of history. “During the trips that are usually three days in duration, the idea is to make them travel back a millennium. For The Spy’s Trail, we have come up with a design where each day is different. In the bus, we begin with a presentation. We have curated experiences like visits to zamindars palaces, Pannaiyar bungalow, visual retellings of the Kadaram and Ganges expeditions and so on,” elucidates Deepa Christe, the organisation’s managing director.

The participants will also get to taste a slice of village life in these regions by attending folk performances, farm walks, relishing veera soru and a dessert that was given to soldiers on returning from war and walking through centuries-old agraharams, among other activities.

A study of ancient temples — some over a 1,000 years old — forms an integral part of the trips because these places of worship were also venues where communities convened to share interest in art, culture, festivities and more. Apart from this, a unique aspect the team has added to the tour is focusing on war zones and strategies of the Chola empire. Explains Deepa, “It’s amazing how kings of this rajya managed to capture the entire Southeast Asia without knowing anything about the oceans they were going to cross or lands they were going to conquer. What was the war strategy they used, how they developed their massive naval fleet and more, are the questions we aim to address.”

The group also gets to walk on the same land where the nearly 75,000 soldiers were buried after the brutal battle of Thirupurambiyam, fought between Pandya king Varagunavarman II, an ally of the Pallavas, the Western Ganga Dynasty and the Cholas. “Facts reveal that this war was a major turning point in history because it led to the utter defeat of the Pandyas and rise of the Chola empire,” she shares. The tours will be a perfect blend of fact with fictional literature. To know more, visitfacebook.com/heritageinspiredindia.