2022
I got the idea of hosting the "Gampaha City Geo Walk" meetup during my first LG meet up experience “Gampaha New Year Photo Walk” hosted by @kasunaaa. During the last photo walk, I noticed that there is a lot of missing information in the locations already placed in the Google map around the Gamapaha city area. Accessibility information was not updated in so many existing places, Phone numbers were not available in some others, the website was not in many others, and there are some new places which have not been updated into the google map, etc.. Hence I decided to host this Gampaha Geowalk.
The main Objective was to update such missing information around Gampaha city area so that the Google map user experience would become a more complete and accurate one for Gampaha area. In addition, getting to know other local guides around the area and share our experience as local guides, encourage new guides to contribute valuable content to the maps were also in my list of expectations.
As planned on Friday morning (19th April), I went to Gampaha Railway Station at 8.30 am. As 7 guides have responded as attending I was expecting at least 5 people to show up. But only two beautiful souls showed up @kasunaaa and @SupunW. We waited a little bit more to see if others are coming but after a while, I decided to start our mission with these two Musketeers.
My plan was to start from one end of the town and proceed through the city. Therefore we cross the railway track and walk towards the Little Hut restaurant which is situated at the end line of the one corner of town limit. "Little Hut" was still not open as it was early.
I explained our objective briefly to Kasun and Supun. I did a quick training to Supun as he was bit new to map edits and updates.
Soon after we logged in to maps and started our mission. When we open add missing info it was like an orange color jungle with loads of missing info flags. But we determined to add as much as missing info we could find. We started by split the boundries for three of us and try to selectively update missing info for each area so that three of us won’t update the same info.
The task was taking more time than we anticipated. There were a lot of places without contact numbers, websites, photos, and accessibility information. Sometimes the phone numbers showcased was not working or no phone numbers were shown in shop name boards. We had to ask those from the owner. In some occasions, owners were suspicious about our inquiries. Therefore we had to explain our motive and objective. Those things took time.
However slowly but surely we were making progress. One hour or so passed and we were swatting buckets. April Sun was not making it easy for us. We took a little break drink break at Isuru Caters by crossing the railway track.
During the break, we discussed and analyzed our progress. We were doing fine and had covered reasonably good ground. With the new found energy from the break, we started to sweep the main hot zone in the town. We parked the vehicle in the same spot we parked the vehicle in our last meetup. Under the shade of the tree with a beehive ?
Then we began our hunt for missing info again. We split up slightly covered separate parts of the town. Most of the missing info was related to shops. Some related to banks and other institutions. We were surprised to found out that more than 90% of the establishments in Gampaha has very poor accessibility for a differently able personel. Which we definitely think it needs to be improved as soon as possible.
After another hours’ time, we were exhausted. Sun has beaten up down badly. Our clothes were socked with a swat. We went to find one of our favorite drinks in town. The Legendary Highland Milk bottle(Chocolate flavored). We found a milk bar Near the new bus stand. The cold bottle of milk was heavenly.
We rested about 15 minutes with sipping cold drink and checking our way forward. We have made most of the orange color flags into green. We felt sense of accomplishment. Myself and Kasun were tired and wanted rest a bit more, but @SupunW was pumped up and eager to start again as soon as possible. He was pushing us. Because of that, we started earlier again. We continued for another hour. Maybe little more than that. We have managed to cover most of the missing info in the area we covered. Since it was a Poya holiday some places were closed and some information was unavailable. But when looking at the map update we have done very well.
SS.
Three of us were very happy looking at the map. It was time to wrap up the hunt missing info and end the “Gamapaha Geo Walk”. We said cheers over a freshly squeeze orange juice and celebrate the successful mission completion.
Many Thanks, @kasunaaa , and @SupunW for your enormous contribution to make this meet up a Success.
Recap Video ... https://youtu.be/9V1kDsOhRiQ
( Sorry for the late upload of RECAP video. YouTube was banned in Sri Lanka following the horrific easter attack incident. ban was removed today.. hope you enjoy the video)
Photos from the shared album -->> Click Here ?
Until Net time…
Cheers..!!!
@KarenVChin yes this is our second meetup completed recently. The earlier Photowalk was done on Monday. Then this geo walk is just completed a couple of days before the attack took place. Now police are asked people to stay away from public places as much as possible due to security reasons
