Bali Jatra In Odisha’s Cuttack To Take Off From Nov 15

Cuttack: The famous trade fair, Bali Jatra, in Odisha’s Cuttack city will start from November 15 this year.

Cuttack district collector Dattatreya Bhausaheb Shinde announced this after the first preparatory meeting on the trade fair on Wednesday.

The Bali Jatra, which will be organised on the banks of river Mahanadi, will continue for 8 days till November 22. The contributors can submit their writings for the Bali Jatra souvenir by September 30.

The fair commemorates 2,000-year-old maritime and cultural links between ancient Kalinga (ancient Odisha) and Bali and other South and Southeast Asian regions like Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Burma (Myanmar) and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The event is marked by a massive open-air market where a variety of goods, including traditional handicrafts, are bought and sold.

Besides, several attractions are added every year by the organisers for entertainment of the visitors to the annual fair. Last year, the fair included tunnel aquarium, digital exhibition, art exhibition, eco-friendly fire and multimedia and laser light shows, rural pavilion, handicrafts, urban SHG enclosure inside ‘Cuttack in Cuttack’, water sports and musical evenings.

The Odisha Rural Development and Marketing Society (ORMAS) have allotted 420 stalls to traders at the venue where art and crafts along with an array of handlooms, handicrafts, agri-horticulture value-added products, authentic spices of women producers and artisans from across 30 districts of Odisha and 22 other states like Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Manipur, Tripura, and Chhattisgarh were showcased at Pallishree Mela.

The food pavilion with around 30 stalls offered delicacies from Odisha, Rajasthan, Punjab and North-Eastern states.