This was another exciting meet up at Jaffna. The up and down distance to Jaffna is almost 427 kilometers from the capital city. However, this journey was worth the drive. @ThanulakshanS , the owner of Jaffna local guides have hosted some meet-ups in Jaffna. However, I had a personal desire to host one by myself in Jaffna along with Thanulakshan. As planned, the fellow local guides gathered in the Nallur temple early in the morning where the annual feast was ongoing and on that specific day, a significant event named Car festival took place. Knowing the fact that this is one of the most famous festivals among the Hindus of Sri Lanka, we gathered at this place wearing the traditional outfit which is Vesti and shirts.
As expected, there were more than 300,000 devotees around the temple, taking part in the traditional events as well as dragging of the car which is locally known as “Ther” in Tamil (தேர்). I took my drone with the permission of the civil aviation authority of Sri Lanka, aligning to the requirements of the Defense Ministry and I could capture the bird view of this massive event. After processing the photos and videos, I was just astonished of myself, as this was my first time to have a look at this great event from such a view. This was a rear capture though.
Also, I met a new face at this meet-up, even though we knew each other through the G+, this was our first time to meet in person. This was none other than Prashanth, Also another colleague (Dinusha) joined us from Colombo to Jaffna to see this popular festival at Nallur temple when we left from Colombo. During the festival, we had a lot of fun taking part in customary activities aligned to the festival. We were munching the all-time famous roasted peanuts in shell from Jaffna.
The hanging Kaavadi event was remarkable too. This is where a man was hanging on hooks attached to his posterior part of the body and attached to a moving tractor. This is one of the prominent events undertaken in certain temples of Hinduism. People do this as a sacrifice.
After completion of the car festival, the meet up has begun. At the beginning of the event, I promised them that the person comes up with the highest number of edits will be getting some Local Guides stickers from me. Taking this serious, our guys started functioning in full swing. We covered a lot of places within a short while. However, there were several places where statues of some famous people have been erected which were not pinned properly. I recommended the Jaffna local guides to organize a meet up to fix all the statues on the right place in the Google maps. Also, we removed many duplicated places from the maps and fixed many errors as much as possible during the event. Regardless of the contribution, I shared the badge and stickers among all the participants and also hosted a small knowledge sharing session.
Dinusha, who traveled along with us from Colombo to Jaffna to see the festival was new to the Local Guides program. Having a look at the event, he chipped in and started writing review and adding photos. Also, he mentioned that he will be traveling to Polonnaruwa next weekend and he will be contributing to Google maps during his travel. It was a great enthusiasm to see from a newly joined fellow local guide.
Even though it was a hot day, we rarely felt tired as there were many huts providing juices, tea and other beverages to the devotees and pilgrims who participated in the Car festival. Also when I had to spend the previous night in Jaffna, Thanuluxan insisted to stay at their home. Their hospitality was really amazing. Especially the traditional food from Jaffna and the ripe juicy mangos were finger licking good. After having so much fun in this event we returned home with a lot of memories while realizing the fact that our local guide community has built a strong bonding among us colleagues.
Special Thanks to @Kumaran_thanga, @ThanulakshanS , @KajeeGK, @Dhass, @Prashanth & @Dinusha
Thanks for the awesome meet up 
Videos are just awesome cant explain in words Big thanks from jaffna local guides community Explore the Jaffna pride to next step this is the first time I watched nallur in bird view 
And Thanks for the stickers 