We were locked down to our homes for long time. However we didn’t want to miss the first chance after removal of the curfew imposed to Western province where we live in. My self and my LG partner @ravindus together had so many plans for meetups together in our bucket list. I pulled out one and hosted a 360 Photo Run and Camping Nowhere at Ella area where one of the most scenic and popular tourist attraction in Sri Lanka. This Community Challange meetup was held as a part of a series of challanges for the Community Live event 2020.
Interesting part was we were not sure about the situation there since whole country was in alert due to rising second phase of Covid-19 in Sri Lanka.
Few Local Guide friends of mine joined with me for this event. We had a thought of doing a camp at night but we haven’t confirmed anyplace for that.On the meetup day early in the morning I picked up ravindus, @SupunW Chathuranga and Malith from their places and headed towards Ella. We took expressway and were eble to reach Ella by 11a.m. We had our 360 cameras ready and fully charged for the event. I explained them the agenda while having lunch.
Then we took some cool 360 images at the Ella town to upload to Google Map. Then we went to the most popular place The nine arch railway bridge which is made of stones in curved shape. Usually this place is crowded by tourists but because of the situation few groups were there. So we could capture 360 images and footages as we wanted.
You can enjoy our huge collection of 360 images here in this photo album.
We spend more than one hour there and then went to explore a unpopular view point called Angry point. We could witness panromic view from there and took some 360 as well. We were bit tired and wen we reach the Ravana Falls it was getting dark. We had a bath at there and then we decided to do camping at Madolsima (Pitamaruwa) mini world’s end.
It was a thrilling experience driving through thick mist towards Madolsima. We couldn’t see more than few feets ahead. The rain slowed us further. However finally we could reach our destination. We noticed that road network is not properly updated in this area. It was quite difficult to find without map information available and during the night and the thick mist but finally Local guides here to take care of all missing information on the map. I was able to draw all the way missing road network to the mini world’s end and got approved in couple of days.
We were attacked by bloody leaches soon after we got out from the vehicle. We grabbed our tents 
and equipments to find the camp site in the dark. We pictched our tents and ravindu prepared the dinner for us as usual. Rain and cold weather led us to sleep before mid night as we couldn’t setup a campfire.
Next morning we woke up early expecting sunrise 
but we were unfortunate to see the sun. Then it was time to explore the sorrundings. We were able to add many 360 photos to our collection. We noticed that we near missed fatal world’s end drop last night one foot away. We prepared Coffee and quick breakfast before packed up. After several hours we left the campsite after doing all the cleaning. Our vehicle did not start and we had to became mechanics to get it started. Fortunately it was little disel block but it delayed us about an hour.
It was super misty and magical on the way back even at the 12 noon. We stoped couple of places to get pictures of the very moment. Next we wanted to refresh our selves. One local business owner gave directions to a nice waterfall called ‘Besama’ where we could dip and bath with fresh water. Then it was time for us to return since we had to travel more than 300km to back home.
It was end of another adventure meetup and were super satisfied doing outdoor adventure activities after some time.
You may enjoy the short highlight video of the meetup as well
@AdrianLunsong many thanks for creating and give us opertunity to participate for the Community Meetup Challang.
#CommiunityMeetupChallange #CommunityLive2020
