Anuradhapura: a pilgrim city with lodging, food and interpretation to match its sacredness

A first step

Stay 2 nights among the pilgrims and ask 10 families how they eat, where they sleep and what they would pay for a clean room and a guide who explains the sites. Then write a 1-day guided pilgrimage with vegetarian meals and a simple room, price it, and offer it to the organiser of one temple society's pilgrimage trip. One group booking proves it.

Who pays first

A temple society organising a pilgrimage bus, which pays per head for clean lodging, proper food and a guide who explains what the pilgrims are seeing.

What leaves today

Pilgrims arrive in great numbers and leave the same day, so the lodging, food and interpretation that would honour the city earn nothing locally.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. SeventeenOne Building
  One building, and what a city could be known for

More from cluster 26

• 476Colombo: a night market on the Galle Face green run to a standard, every weekend
• 477Colombo: the Pettah as a managed market street, cleaned, lit and sold to visitors as the best bazaar in Asia
• 478Kandy: the lake promenade with cafés and evening performances, not only the temple
• 479Galle: a residents' company that owns the Fort's tourist lets and keeps the residents in
• 480Jaffna: a culinary capital, the crab and the palmyrah sold as a cuisine
• 481Trincomalee: the harbour as a sailing and diving centre for the Bay of Bengal

All 10 ideas in this cluster