Film shooting venues are the new tourist attractions in Varanasi Oct 06th, 2019 from Times of India

The timeless charm of Varanasi , continues to bewitch filmmakers, who are making a beeline to can their films in and around the city, capturing the picturesque locales. Frequent visibility of the city in films and other mediums, including television and web world, is making an impact on domestic tourism. Travellers coming to the city try and incorporate places which they have seen on the screen, in their itinerary.

“After the film Mukti Bhawan was released I got a lot of calls from travel agencies to include the place where the film was shot in my itinerary of Banaras. Travellers were also keen to witness the activity of young boys collecting coins from river Ganga which was shown in films like Mukti Bhawan and Masaan . Similarly when we take our guests to Ramnagar Fort , we make it a point to inform them about the films that were canned there and also tell them about the shooting, if any, happening in the city at that point of time,” says Kuldeep Kumar, who organises walking tours .

Sharing an experience, senior guide Shailesh Tripathi says, “Recently, I guided a group of travellers from South India who were mainly entrepreneurs and corporate honchos. While taking them around the city which included temple visit they wanted to visit the area where the award winning film Masaan was filmed. With films being a major draw in our country domestic travellers are really influenced by them.”

Similarly Santosh Kumar Singh, owner of a travel agency, says now a lot of stress is on experiential tourism, where travellers want to feel the city. “Even while taking the travellers to ghats like Nandeshwar or Chet Singh we add the information about Bollywood’s fetish for shooting on these ghats naming the films shot here.” “If Dashshwamedha ghat is shown repeatedly in films or there is a mention of some place of the city in the story of the film, this makes the traveller inquisitive. They want to see the place as to how it actually looks. Though the tourism campaign, including that on the social media, is run by our head office, we keep them posted on the shootings happening in the city so that it can be included in future promotional campaigns,” says Kirtiman Srivastava, Tourism Officer, Varanasi and Vindhyachal region .