Two Wheels for a Week: The Middle Path Cycling Trip

Week Without Walls is an annual off-campus trip that every grade in secondary school goes for, apart from the seniors in grade 12. That means, that as an 11th grader, this would be my last ever Week Without Walls trip. Therefore, I wanted to end it with a trip that I heard lots of good about, which was The Middle Path Cycling trip.

On this trip, we traveled to Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, and for 5 days, completed around 40km – 50km of cycling a day. This was a very fun experience, but also physically challenged me a lot.

We started the trip by departing from school quite early. As we were on the way to the camp, we stopped with around 32km remaining and biked into camp from there. This first ride was one that I enjoyed very much. As it was the first ride, I was quite nervous and not very sure what to expect, and was worried that I would feel tired already, however, it went much better than I imagined the first ride to be. We were cycling along a canal with amazing views of the mountains, as well as through forests. On this day, I was a part of the first (of many) bike accident of the trip. It did set the expectation for me that this would be happening a lot. I got crashed into by two others from behind, falling straight onto the ground, and already getting a bruise on my leg. Luckily, the two others were not seriously injured. After this ride to camp, we took the role of having to wash our bikes every day. After this long tiering day so far, we were able to go down into the stream for a swim, which was very fun and refreshing! It was quite cold but definitely worth going in after a long ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then came the second day of the trip, where I had woken up with sore legs already. Today was meant to be our longest bike ride. We started off the day by making ourselves a packed lunch sandwich, which we had mid-way of the day by a beautiful lake. The whole ride from today was very scenic, and it did not feel like the 48km it was planned to be. Once we got back to camp, we once again went to the stream, which was so refreshing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On day three, we started our ride around the same time as usual and went on a gorgeous path with an amazing view of the Sigiriya Rock. In total for this day, we cycled for an approximate distance of 33km. As we began the ride, this day was where the soreness in my legs and back was really starting to hit. I just knew that by the end of this day, my legs would be in lots of pain, which I why I made sure to keep in mind about keeping good endurance the whole day, and to push myself to keep going, but not push myself too hard of pain. We stopped at some local paddy field huts for lunch, where we got a small cooking lesson as well, with some demonstrations of cooking local Sri Lankan rice and curry. The food was sooo good, and everyone went for seconds!! The cycle back to the camp was quite tiring this time, especially after eating so much food! Before heading back to camp, we stopped by one of the other WWW groups (heART) to meet with them at their accommodation! This meet-up was really short, but lots of fun to see some of our other friends after a couple days of no communication!

Then came the fourth day of the trip, which was another very tiring one. We started by cycling to the entrance of the Pidurangala Rock, which we were climbing! But before we set off, we did some challenges which were really fun and entertaining, such as the “slowest rider”, where we challenged each other to who could complete around a 30m distance in the slowest time. Though this may sound pretty easy, it was difficult, and many of us were out within the first 10 meters as it is just so hard to keep balance. After doing some activities and stopping for some snacks, we started hiking up the steep path. On this day, there were so many other people climbing as well, which caused lots of “foot traffic”, meaning we had to wait for a while for people to pass by. However, once we got up, the view was so amazing and worth it! There was a grogues mountain range, and the perfect straight view of Sigiriya too. We stayed at the top for a while before coming down, but with our unlucky timing, a rain storm was just starting to hit as we hiked down, meaning the path was getting really slippery! Once we got back down to our bikes, we were all so hungry and ready for lunch, where we cycled to the Sigiriya town had lunch at a cafe, and walked down to the Barista for a little treat (which was so worth it and well needed!!). Once we got back to camp, I wasn’t able to have enough time to jump into the stream, as it was my group’s turn to cook dinner. We had already bought the ingredients prior, and our meal was fried beans, with noodles and vegetables. The process of cooking was quite interesting, we got lots of help from some of the other students (not a part of our group) too. I found it fun to cook with my friends, and it was an interesting learning experience to cook different things in a new environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, the fifth day of the trip was quite painful for me. I had a really bad headache the whole day, and of course, this was the day when we cycled in the sun, with the hottest weather. I made sure to keep myself going, by hydrating myself every often. We cycled for around 37 km, until we reached the buses, where we then departed back to Colombo, where this trip made its end!