- YouTuber Nadun Tennakoon on taking a different approach to tourism videos
A young YouTuber, Nadun Tennakoon, last year unveiled a video of a trip he took to Algama, where the famous Siri Parakum film was made, making it Sri Lanka’s first ever cinematic video showcasing that area’s tourist potential.
When Brunch caught up with him yesterday (1), he said that the video, which also featured his golden retriever, has so far ended up on several foreign travel pages and websites, shining the spotlight on a beautiful but oft overlooked part of Sri Lanka.
Born in Badulla, surrounded by the misty mountains and lush greenery, Nadun Tennakoon tells us has always admired the great outdoors. This love for nature motivated him to enrol in scouting programmes back when he was in school that allowed him to travel all over Sri Lanka, which is around the time he realised his passion for travel.
He also told us that his ancestral home was built on top of a mountain and that his childhood was spent mostly climbing mountains and exploring forests. His wanderlust was shared by his family too, who would constantly go on trips to mountains and forests in Sri Lanka.
On one such camping trip to Yala, his parents encouraged him to film a video and upload it to YouTube. This fateful video garnered over 4,000 views in two days and had several comments from foreigners commending the video and asking him questions on the area. Motivated by the response, he began focusing on developing his YouTube channel and began filming and uploading more of his travels.
Tennakoon believes that people are of the opinion that Sri Lanka is all about beaches and the southern coast, but not many pay attention to the beauty and adventure that the mountain ranges have to offer. Although his first ever video was to a tourist hotspot, the videos that followed mostly depicted adventure as Tennakoon prefers travelling to parts of our country that are incredibly difficult to get to.
Talking to us about one such trip, he reminisced about a trip to Sri Pada back in 2018, where he took a road called Dehena Kanda which he told us is one of the most difficult routes to get to Sri Pada, which very few have travelled through.
“We spent over 18 hours on that road. We didn’t even stop to eat – not because of time, but because if you stopped, you’d be bitten by about 10 leeches immediately and when you stop to remove them, another bunch of leeches will attach to you,” he described, adding that they had to snack on biscuits, chocolates, cheese and other food that kept their energy levels steady while hiking this path. Unfortunately for them, the weather was not on their side either, and halfway through it began pouring rain – which of course, attracted more leeches.
“We had to cross two streams as well, all while getting drenched in the rain,” he added. Since the journey took more than 18 hours, most of this took place in the night, where their vision was limited. Tennakoon told us that after all of the suffering it took to reach the top of the peak, the sunrise they witnessed as they took their final steps to the top was like “a breath of fresh air”.
The Algama production, which can be found on his YouTube channel Travel with Nadun, which added another dimension to the video. When asked why he chose to venture away from his usual style and explore cinematic filming for this video, he explained that since he has an avid interest in travel content, he tends to watch a lot of local travel videos online and noticed that there were hardly any that took a cinematic approach to filming.
Observing this niche market, he began experimenting with that style of film and as the engagement on latest video shows, captured the market successfully. He believes that creating videos in this style will encourage more tourists to visit our country as it captures the beauty of Sri Lanka better than if it were to be a vlog. At the moment, he noted the country is facing many hardships and its people are suffering and added that the dollars that tourists bring in is invaluable, and more travel content creators should be focussing more on enticing the foreign market rather than the local market.
Tennakoon told us that at the moment, he has no intention of monetising his travel content. “It’s still a hobby for me. I do tour guiding for tourists as a part time job when I’m not at campus, but making money off my YouTube or becoming a full time travel influencer is not anything I see myself doing in the future.”
While he hopes to encourage more tourists and locals alike to venture into the wilds of Sri Lanka, he urged them to remain mindful and respect their surroundings.
“The reason a lot of people don’t like to make videos on unexplored areas of Sri Lanka is that they are worried that they will be destroyed if too many start to visit,” he shared, adding that he believes everyone deserves to experience the wonders this country has to offer – which is why his videos focus on areas most have never heard of, but asks of everyone to simply clean up after themselves when leaving.
“Our country is a paradise – we must treat it as such,” he noted.
