Starter Kit. Idea 196 of 500. Cluster 9
Pilgrimage routes properly interpreted: Anuradhapura, Mihintale, the Sri Maha Bodhi, Kandy, Dambulla, with guides who know the history and not only the route
The mechanism, from the book
What cannot be copied. Every competitor can build a beach hotel. No competitor can offer a Buddhist tradition more than 2,000 years old, still practised at the places where it first took root on the island.
The first step
Walk the route yourself with a notebook: Anuradhapura, Mihintale, the Sri Maha Bodhi, Kandy, Dambulla. At each site, ask the temple's lay committee what they wish visitors understood before arriving and what behaviour they are tired of correcting. Turn the answers into a 2-page guide, show it back to each committee, then offer a guided day to a tour operator in Colombo at a price you name. The proof is approval and a booking.
- Who pays first
- A tour operator whose guests complain that the sacred sites were rushed, and who will pay more for a guide the temples themselves respect.
- What leaves today
- Pilgrims and tourists are driven between the sites with a route and no history, so the meaning stays behind and the visit ends in an afternoon.
Ask first
- Central Cultural Fund. Ask whether licensed guides can work at their sites, and how guides are licensed.
- Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority. Ask how a guide gets the national guide licence for these sites.
Check before you spend
Whether your guides hold the licence needed at each site, and what each temple allows guides to say and do inside the sacred areas.
Find out these three numbers
- How many visitors a day walk this route with no guide at all?
- What does a licensed guide charge for a full day now?
- How many days does a visitor need to walk the route properly?
A comparison from the book
Zermatt. Chapter Five
"the mountain acquired something no marketing budget can buy: a story that people already knew"
These sites already carry a story the world half knows; a good guide tells it properly.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.