A New Model for Tourism in the North
For travelers seeking more meaningful experiences, Nandhi Collective in Jaffna provides a new model for slow tourism in the North, connecting visitors directly with local culture through curated tours, a thirdspace and heritage festival, while ensuring economic return for the communities involved.
Photography: Nandhi Collective.
Sri Lanka is no stranger to tourism, but it often follows familiar patterns. Sun, sea, and surf on Southern coastal routes and established hill country circuits. It’s a type of tourism that prides itself on simplicity, which often translates into experiences that are easily packaged and scaled.
The Northern region doesn’t quite fit into that model. Its value lies in the intangible heritage that it has managed to keep intact, distinct from the rest of the island. Brightly colored sarees, Hindu kovils, Dutch forts, bicycles, spicy seafood curries, palmyra trees, all backdropped by a constellation of islands connected by bridge and boat. A commonly heard refrain: the North feels like stepping back in time.
But the same qualities that make it unique are what has made it harder to access. Enter Nandhi Collective. Formed by returning diaspora, this Jaffna-based social enterprise works within a new model, one that is designed to connect travelers directly with the region’s living culture, while still ensuring economic return for the communities involved.
By curating direct-to-community experiences that move beyond conventional tourism, visitors are connecting directly to knowledge holders. Nandhi Collective offer both custom multi-day itineraries as well as one-off experiences that are intentionally varied: a cook-along with local women from Vaddukodai demonstrating how the infamous crab curry is made from scratch, followed by a long table communal lunch in Catumaran, a 100-year-old ancestral home redesigned by Channa Daswatte. A morning spent with Gurunagar fishermen learning traditional net fishing techniques in lagoon plots divided up by the church, capped with a visit to a working sea cucumber farm. Afternoons spent with master artisans in craft workshops, discovering the art of hand-painting Tamil signs, clay pottery, and palmyra weaving, crafts that are part of everyday life, but increasingly under threat. Proceeds from these direct-to-community experiences support people, practices and communities involved.
to sample the local catch in the middle of the Jaffna lagoon.
“For a meaningful enterprise to succeed here, it must be rooted in the local cultural context and an understanding of its specific history and communities. You can’t really impose a framework in Jaffna that has been created elsewhere. Ironically, the more we focused on this region’s specificity, the clearer it became that there are some universal truths about human connection and collective memory. Through all the relationships we’ve built with our community partners, we look at heritage preservation not just as a practice that honors the past, but as a conduit for cultural identity and supporting livelihoods. Because for heritage to endure, it must sustain those who carry it,” Yashodha Sivakumaran says, a Tamil- Australian.
The group have also restored a heritage home in the center of Jaffna, functioning as a café, gallery, and boutique. Formerly an unused space, Nandhi is not designed to be simply a cafe. Visitors might come for coffee, but leave having encountered a local artist, purchased a handcrafted Palmyra soap or hand drawn postcard, and signed up to join a history and architecture tour that provides context for the layered city that Jaffna is. This May, Nandhi Collective expands this model through Northbound,
a three-day culture and heritage festival happening at various locations around Jaffna and the surrounding areas. Guests stay at a luxury boutique resort, and move through both public and private access spaces: restored courtyard homes, fishing lagoons, paddy fields, and more, all led by local collaborators. With food as a big part of Jaffna heritage, Northbound curates both traditional Tamil dishes like Jaffna crab curry and kool, as well as supperclub-style dining, where traditional dishes get turned on their head through sensory multi-course experiences that include folk music and dance theater.
“We’re conscious that, as diaspora with a certain level of privilege and access, our role here is simply as connectors. We want to use our skills to create a framework where Northern culture, when accessed thoughtfully, can help sustain livelihoods, but also help revive practices that might otherwise die out,” says Ashanya Indralingam, a Malaysian-born Tamil.
Rather than aiming to reclaim the North, the group came with a mission to understand what was really needed. Looking ahead, Nandhi Collective is focused on deepening the model that underpins the current work, such as working directly with local craftspeople to create products hyper-localized to the North, with a contemporary spin. Through Northbound, the group saw an influx of local demand for Northern experiences and hopes to curate more events catering to growing interest. The group also offers training and mentorship for local guides, hosts, and small business operators to raise the standards of storytelling, service, and experience design. “What we hope emerges is that the North becomes seen as a destination for the considered traveler, not just a niche stopoff.
Ideally, Nandhi Collective becomes a model that others can transfer across the North, and maybe even the Central and lesser known regions of Sri Lanka,” says Ashanya. “It’s a way to activate underused spaces and places as a counterbalance to mass tourism and ensure that locals are still the cultural and economic beneficiaries.”
Nandhi Cafe and Gallery
19, Rakka Lane, Jaffna, Sri Lanka
WhatsApp +94 76 186 6231
@NandhiCollective
nandhicollective.com
http://northbound.nandhicollective.com
