What Is The Distance of Nuapatna From Cuttack?

Recently, I read in a couple of research papers that the distance of Nuapatna from Cuttack is 100 kilometres.

Nuapatna is a place in the Cuttack district of Odisha, India, that is famous for a variety of Odisha Handloom with "Bandha Kala" i.e. "Ikat" of Odisha. 

Bandha Kala is the local Odia term for the art of "Tie and Dye" weaving. This art is called "Ikat" weaving.

There are many looms. Many weavers have been associated with this craft for many centuries.

Beautiful sarees and dress-materials and more are handwoven with traditional motifs. They are called - "Khandua".

Both "Orissa Ikat" and "Khandua" have the Geographical Indication (GI) tags.

Nuapatna and Maniabandha are famous for Khandua Sarees & Fabrics.

How many of us have seen a loom and the weaving process?

Have been sharing in Odisha Govt meetings and with stakeholders that there must be a state-facilitated tourism connection with such heritage places and GI Tourism should be promoted.

Great to see acceptance of our suggestion- tourism link with #handloom #heritage is now planned.
We’ve been discussing in several meetings- Inglomacy, ThinkTank, CII etc.
Could personally share with Shri @vishaldevk & @odisha_tourism officials, thanks to Shri @jkmohantySWOSTI🙏 https://t.co/c9sZI2U8VF

— Anita Sabat - ଡ. ଅନୀତା ସାବତ (@anitaexplorer) June 29, 2021

Shree Jagannatha also wears these handlooms. 

Shree Jagannatha's fabrics/sarees are mostly Khandua. They have the verses of Gita Govinda handwoven. Even today, the deities are dressed in these heritage handlooms.

More information in my previous blog post-

http://www.anitaexplorer.com/2020/04/jagannath-jayadeva-and-khandua-sarees.html

The Manchester Marathon Saree worn by Odia runner was also Khandua. (No, it was not Sambalpuri though many media reports carried the wrong information)

More information in this blog post-

Khandua or Sambalpuri? Sab Chalta Hai?

Now over to our distance query-

Having visited Nuapatna a couple of times from Cuttack, I was surprised to see that the research papers had mentioned the wrong distance- i.e. 100 kilometres- as the distance between Nuapatna and Cuttack.

I immediately checked with our know-it-all guide- Google.

Google stated the distance depending on the path chosen. None of them are 100 kilometres now though.

As we can see in the above screen-shot, the distance is - 54.8 km- that is nearly 50% of 100 kms!

Yet, the papers of these researchers state double the distance.

In future, any other researcher, who consults these papers, while writing about Nuapatna and about Orissa Ikat and Khandua, is sure to make the same mistake as they will believe what has already been published.

This is just one of the examples.

The printed words are considered to be correct, and hence trusted, and safely quoted.

Researchers and writers do not even cross-check. They believe the information given in the previously published papers/reports/articles/books etc. and directly use the same in their freshly written works.

This is the way misinformation spreads further.

Is there a way to update all the wrong information in research papers and news reports?

What do you feel? Do you trust all that is published?

Please share in the comments below.