My last Week Without walls, I never thought it would come this fast but here I am writing about it. As much as this was an AMAZING WWW this was, NOTHING could have gotten me to wake up as early as 3.30 in the morning 🥲. We left school at 4.00 in the morning, when the world was still asleep and it seemed like we were the only ones on the road. All of us, still half asleep and ready to go to back bed, went to sleep as soon as we took off. But after 2 hours, I woke up to silence in the bus, and we stopped to take a VERY desperately needed bathroom break. After that, the bus was quiet for another 2 hours as we slept off all the sleep we had missed. Our first official stop was breakfast at a roadside restaurant, which had DELICIOUS Sri Lankan buffet, and then we drove a bit to Kaludiya Pokuna in Mihintale. We learnt about the history of the King that lived there, and we also saw a snake and a really cool turtle (who was later bullied by a bird trying to assert dominance🫡) but anyways, I wrote a post card to my parents which I would post later that day. After we passed elephant pass, we stopped for (I am literally NOT exaggerating) THE BEST LUNCH IVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE 🤩🤩. There was chicken butter masala and paneer butter masala, with a REALLY good butter garlic naan w😮💨 It was hands down the best part of my day, and I will be craving that for the REST OF MY LIFE. Then we went to point pedro to post our postcards to our parents, which was SUPPOSED to be the northern-most point of Sri Lanka, which we later discovered was NOT actually. ALSO i saw some donkeys, they were really cute. Then after around 30 minutes in the bus, where we SCRAMBLED to get to Keerimalai springs before it closed (bumpiest bus ride of my life)
We were all so excited to get into the water at that point, but when we got there it was closed. As we started walking back to the bus thought, they opened up just for us, and we got into our swimsuits as quick as we could. The springs were divided into male and female, and the myth behind them was that it was supposed to let you live a long, healthy life (obviously now im going to live till im 100 years old) ✌️ The water was surprisingly warm, and Stephie, Vicky and I swam through the clear, blue water for a little while until we had to go to our hotel. When we finally got to our hotel, we were all exhausted and ready to go to bed, but we were even hungrier. I had this really good crab curry and rice, which was the perfect end to the day. That night, I slept like the dead and didn’t wake up at all. It was an action-packed and really interesting day, and since I’ve never been to the north of sri lanka (I know, in all my 17 years of living here I haven’t been to Jaffna, don’t attack me😭😭) honestly thats what made my trip so special to me, because I have lived so long in Sri Lanka without visiting some of the places that have shaped it to be what it is today, and this trip gave me the chance to do that.
On DAY 2, we started our day bright and early (I woke up five minutes before breakfast, the extra sleep was totally worth it though💯) and me and Aura had to rush to get to breakfast in time. After a very yummy breakfast, we made out way to the bus where we took two different causeways onto Keyes island. Some of us bought hats and sunglasses to wear on the boat, and some of us didnt (me, as it turned out it was not the best decision for an hour ride on a boat in the middle of the day, in the ocean with no cover), so everyone without hats literally got baked on the boat later on (but its fine it was for the experience ✌️) (lesson learned
bring a hat if you dont want your skin so red that you can see your handprints when you put pressure on them 😀) But anyways, the boat was one of my favorite parts of the whole day. We made our way to the front of the boat where we sat down on the edges and watched the waves for an hour (sounds boring but it was so fun) After around an hour, we arrived on Deft island and we did a tour by bus. We didn’t see any wild horses 😔 🙁 but I did get to pet a really cute puppy. On the boat ride back, i took the BEST nap I have EVER taken in my life on the front bit. It was really funny because the whole front deck of the boat (which was not very big to begin with) was just taken over by the twelve of us, all stretched out and taking a nap ( I got the worst sunburn ever but it was totally worth the nap) Then we went to a place called Rio Ice cream, where I had this really yummy thing called “sizzling ice cream”. it was basically a deconstructed lava cake, which was surrounded with sizzling, bubbling chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream 😮💨. It was the best end to the day, and I had the best food coma when I went to bed that night.
On DAY 3, we had a relatively late start compared to the other days (one of the only times on the trip where I could sleep in, if
you could call sleeping until 8.00 “sleeping in”), and I was finally able to catch up on some sleep. We packed our bags and took a short bus ride to Jaffna Fort, where we walked around the perimeter and played a (very interesting and very annoying) game of duck duck goose (almost resulted in a few brokenankles) . Then we had some dosai and some paratha, and we were on our way to Mannar. On the Mannar causeway we saw a giant flock of flamingoes in the distance (it was way too far to see), and then we visited a very cool fort where we climbed the walls (and i almost broke my ankle but thats okay 😀) We gobbled down some ice cream before we made our way to Adam and Eve’s grave, where I learnt a lot about religion and the origins of it. Then came my favorite part of the day, where we saw a sunset in India (basically) We could see india in the distance in the sea, which was a really cool experience . We had a little mini photo shoot with the sunset. When we arrived at our new hotel, took a shower, and then we just relaxed and I watched a movie on the TV with Vicky and Stephie. After some VERY yummy kothu, we went to bed after a long, long day.
DAY 4 brought another VERY early start, as we woke up at 5.00 to go watch some flamingoes. It was really cool to look trhough the binoculars and see the flamingoes up close. After that, we packed up again and got ready to go to our next hotel. Also after like 15 minutes in the bus I realized that I had left my pillow at the hotel, but there was no point in going back (RIP pillow 🥲) But the pain was overshadowed by fact that we were going to see some DONKEYSS!!!!! We got a really interesting presentation where I learnt a lot about how donkeys ended up in the orphanage, which was really sad. But we got to feed some donkeys and it was so fun (except one bit my hand s0) We named a white fluffy donkey Turbo (he was a very slow donkey but thats beside the point) And we came up with some very cool service ideas to raise money for the donkeys, as funding was something that the clinic was struggling with. We stopped for lunch, and then started making our way to Pidurangala. When we got to our hotel, we put our stuff in our treehouse (YES our TREEHOUSE, it was so cool, even if any creepy crawly could just invite themselves over into our room but thats okay) Then, we went on a walk and saw lots of birds and views of Pidurangala and Sigiriya rock. I learn a lot about the moat that surrounds Sigiriya and the history behind it, and as well as the fact that there are a lot of big owls that live around sigiriya. It was interesting to learn about the different climates between here, Manna, Jaffna and Pidurangala. When we got back from our walk, we settled in our room and had a feast with all of our snacks (because we didn’t
want them eaten by rats, which has actually happened to me before (RIP my hershey chocolate kisses 😭) )ALSO we found out that we had a hammock (YES A HAMMOCK!!) in our room, which we very carefully tried out (Vicky almost fell through) but we figured out that it could more or less hold three people before maybe breaking and dropping out all of us around ten meters high (we did not want to test out that theory) After we all showered to get the mud from the walk off of us, we had some really good barbequed chicken before getting ready for our night walk. Now I was not the biggest fan of going on the night walk (very dark spaces in the middle of the forest did NOT sound like a good combination to me, especially when I could HEAR the frogs out there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a leopard decided to eat me or something) BUT it was actually SO fun. we found several birds (slightly creepy because they just sat there and didn’t move at all for like three hours) and we spent a lot of time looking for slender lorises, but we didn’t find any which was really sad. (probably because *cough* SOME people could not stop talking for a few minutes and they did NOT know how to whisper) But honestly the sky made up for it, it was the clearest i have EVER seen ANY sky in my LIFE. I found Orin’s belt and Jupiter, and it was really one of my favorite parts of the trip. It was an experience that I defiently would not be able to experience in Colombo, or my day to day life. One thing is the light pollution, which makes the sky so much murkier and harder to see. But mostly because I feel like I am just so buys and stressful that most of the time I dont have the time to take a minute to look up and apreciate the sky and stars. During that night, when we all turned off our flashlights and looked up, it was a sense of calm that I hadn’t been able to feel in such a long time.
And finally, on DAY 5 we woke up at 4.45 (so we probably should have woken up earlier but) because we had to walk and
climb up Pidurangala rock to see the sunrise in time. The climb wasn’t as hard as I remember when I did it the first time, but MAN it did make me want to rethink all of my life choices. Nonetheless, it was actually quite a short climb, but we were slowed down because there was a TON of tourists. By the time we got to the top, we had almost missed the sunrise, but it was totally worth it. When we got to the top, there round 40 to 50 tourist, all sitting on the side and facing the sunrise like they were watching the movie. I think in that moment I realized how glad I was that I didn’t have my phone, because unlike the tourists who ALL had their phones out, I was able to enjoy the moment for once and actually watch the sunrise through my own eyes and not through the phone app on my phone 😀. Hands down, it was the most beautiful sunrise (and honestly one of the only, because who wants to get up THAT early) I have ever seen in my life. Vicky, the photographer, took some beautiful pictures of the mountains in the background, with the mist waving through and the amazing oranges pinks and reds of the sunrise. After climbing down, we had breakfast and then got ready for a ride home. Before actually getting on the road we stopped at a coffee shop and I had a really good latte (not a good idea for a 4 hour bus ride but it was worth it) and I saw a few tourists riding elephants which was actually really sad. there were actually quite a few places that had elephants chained really close, with nowhere to move, all advertised to tourists to ride. Anyways, after quite a nice nap on the bus to catch up on sleep, we arrived back at school, and I was so ready to take a shower in my own bathroom and sleep in my own bed.
So yeah, that was my recap of my 2024 WWW. I am not even exaggerating when I say that this WWW was one of the best. I connected with so many people, learnt about my country, visited places that I should have visited in all my 17 years of living here. I learn about the culture, food and religion of different places, and got to appreciate the amazing diversity of the country that I was born in. I would relive this whole trip again in a heartbeat. It is definetly something i will do again in the future, if you want to get away from the busy cities and more popular touristic destinations, this trip is DEFINETLY a good idea. Also a BIG thanks to our chaperones, Ms Lockwood, Mr. Lockwood, Ms. Melinda and Ms. Gayani for somehow putting up with all of us on our trip!! Lots of good memories (and a few forgotten things but that was a part of the experience) and a really relaxing trip which was a good breather from all the school work.
