2022
This is the first local guide’s meet up hosted by myself and it was successfully completed with 4 other Local Guides on 15th April 2019. This may the first Local Guides Meet-up organized in Gampaha. Gampaha is the second largest city in the western province which is always busy. I would name Gampaha as an Education Hub. A lot of students come here to get their education as many education institutes located in the City. I live close to Gampaha and I used to go there when and I was in school for my educational purposes. Therefore I’m quite familiar with Gampaha City area and that is one reason to select Gampaha for my first meet up.
Gampaha has changed and developed in many ways in recent years but when I searched for photos of Gampaha, I couldn’t find much recent photo showing an iconic view of Gampaha city. Therefore I wanted to add images of the new look of Gampaha City to Map which would be helpful to Google users. Initially, I had thought of doing Map editing or Geo walk as my first meet up but I decided to do a photo walk first because then even new local guides can participate the meetup with me taking photos. I could introduce two of my friends to the local guide program from this meet-up. April 14th is Sinhalese New Year so I named the meet up as “Gampaha New Year Photo Walk”.
As I said earlier Gampaha is a crowded, busy city throughout the year even during other festive seasons such as Vesak and Christmas. This is the only days Gampaha goes less live during the daytime and I took advantage of that where I wanted to keep ourselves safe during the meet-up. We could take few beautiful photos and videos using drone from the city center only because of less density of people and traffic.
Five local guides including couple of my friends have confirmed participation to the meet-up however only 4 of them came. On the meet-up day morning, I picked up my friends Rumal Ravindu and Supun from their places and went to the flyover (meet upgathering point) by 8:30 a.m. Chathuka joined with us at the flyover at the same time. First, we went to a coffee shop and planed the route while having some coffee. New local guides were educated and the program was explained to them first.
We took a selfie together and started the photo walk by 9:00 a.m. from the town center. Then all five of us divided into two groups and started walking around the City capturing nice shots. We could take nice photos including couple of panoramas and aerial view shots. A couple of hours later Chathuka wanted to leave and rest four of us continued taking photos. We wanted to take inside photos of most places but unfortunately, many of them were closed for the New Year and we had to satisfy taking photos only from outside. We would take inside photos during next meetup in Gampaha.
After some time all of us were super tired due to hot weather and Ravindu wanted to drink a king coconut (a variety of coconut) to get refreshed ourselves but for the same reason, we couldn't find any place to get one. Then we had a cup of tea at Isuru CatersGampaha and ended the meetup.
Special thanks to Sanka (one of my friend) who allowed us to use his cameras for this event. He always wanted to join us but he couldn't come because of unavoidable reason. Many thanks to other local guides who participated @Rumal95, @ravindus, and @SupunW, have done the job well to make this event successful. I must thank @Chathu97 for coming to the event with his cameras and drone with a short invitation.
Video editing credits of the recap video of the meet up go to Rumal.
Here you can find the link to shared Google photo album of the meet-up.
Finally, my special thanks to @KatyaL who approved my meet-up hope she will enjoy this as well.
