As usual, I reached the destination early and yes! I started roaming around exploring the lake, meditating, doing some yoga stretches and was relaxing my body and mind. This is one of the best places to do meditation, looking at the Barmouth and the deep lagoon.
I planned to go for a photo walk with fellow local guides and to click some good photos around Batticaloa Lighthouse. Unfortunately, there were no participants this time until 7:30 am, then I decided to walk along the park, lighthouse area up to lagoon bank.Suddenly I heard a bike sound at the parking area and that was non-other than Meshanth. he joined me and was chatting for 20 minutes about how to make this meet up more exciting. Finally, we decided to go for a boat ride and thought to take photos from the boat. Meshanth also cheered my idea and we both went to hire a tourist boat, but the cost was LKR 4500/- so, we decided to go for a cheaper option, a normal engine boat which costs LKR 2000/-
I got a sudden idea and thought to mount my 360 camera and capture the street view of the ride along the boat where normally tourists visit. This will be more useful and helpful for tourists to see the tour and the path. I was actually excited to do this but a bit afraid about the battery and the memory on the camera. I could complete the first trace successfully and then came to the shore area and transferred the files to my mobile phone. ( @PaulPavlinovich this how I save the internal memory)
Then charged both mobile and camera with my power bank and then started the second path. Hold on!!! There was a failure too, yes on my second trip I was recording the 360 videos and then I thought it was moving well and recorded, even in the screen it showed me like it’s on the live record mode, but when I returned to the shore that file was not downloadable and seems the video got corrupted. I never worried about failures and without tiredness, we went to the same ride from the same location and got it.
The boatman was really supportive an I have also explained the benefit of this tour. This will increase the tourists and this will allow them to see the tour. So he was even more excited to show me.
This is my first street view on top of the water and I’m really happy about this work. Like this, you all also can update your famous boat trips to google maps
I have named this SV as “Lake View” and you can view here
More photos please check this album
Note: If you are going to try these kinds of lagoon trails please make sure you wear life jackets and other safety gears. Since we three are good swimmers, we had a little overconfidence not to wear and we left those on the shore area. But I will not recommend anybody to go without life jackets.