As my last year experiencing WWW, I was lucky to be placed in the HeArt trip where we focused on the center of Sri Lanka and the beautiful art created there. This trip has been very impactful to me personally as well as my cultural knowledge. To structure this chronologically, let’s start on the first day.

Our first day we arrived in Kandy to explore the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, of which we split into little groups to go and discover different parts of the temple to draw or recreate in our drawing journals which we had made previously in Advisory. This temple was quite big in area, and there were other architectural structures apart from the main center temple, I decided to sketch the big white stupa in 4d form.

After our temple visit, we had a fun lunch at a pizzeria on a hill and headed to our next, and personally my favorite, destination. Helga’s Folley was the long awaited hotel we stayed at that night, and it was the most unique place that I had ever been to. The aura of this place was magical, every little detail had some history behind it, the owner Helga’s story told by the pictures and newspapers hung on the walls. Every wall was different from another, a painting with extravagant colors that were eye-catching. Almost every cupboard or stand had long burned wax candles that had piled up from years of using and can see the hardships it’s been through. Spider webs caught up in the artifacts of the hotel, as if it was an abandoned museum. The cushion fabrics made of a soft velvet with dark colors, reminding me of the nostalgia of my grandma’s house. Every little thing was thought out but also looked random, effortlessly placed. On top of all the bohemian style interior design, it had a backstory that many believed was haunted, which added to the mystic horror of the place. Unfortunately, we only had the pleasure to stay for one night and we made the most of it by doing all types of activities; the teachers had organized a murder mystery game for us to find who is the killer, similar to the game of Mafia. During the day, we painted with the artist of most of the paintings in the hotel and the environment was very inspiring to us, helping us create beautiful artwork for our exhibition.

Our second day consisted of very artistically directed activities. We first went to a batik production shop and factory to learn about the difficult and careful process of making a batik, we got to make our own little square batik cloth artwork that we took home to impress our family! After that, we went to a famous Sri Lankan artists home and art office that was now converted into a hotel. There, we were all inspired by the environment and it drove us to create interesting artworks, which we put in our journals that we made before the trip. For tonight, we spent 2 nights in an eco lodge called Back and Beyond, our “rooms” were lofts without walls, doorless, amongst nature and bugs. But that’s why its called “Week Without Walls”, at times, this name turns into the reality. I enjoyed the open space of the lodge, it was spacious and the air was fresh, but personally, the bugs and critters were slightly terrifying to me. I tell this story to all my friends excessively, but it seems a necessity to tell you all too. As I was calming showering (mind you this is in the shower with no rooftop and trees are above) and I started to get out, I see from my peripheral vision, a big ginormous wasp heading my way (I am not overexaggerating at all.) Stupidly, my mind registered this to turn towards it and take a better look at it, why I did this, I don’t know. With this, the wasp slaps right in my face, and I bet it left an imprint in the center of my forehead. With such emotion, I run out the shower like a Looney Tunes character and dash across the jungle (here I am exaggerating, it was a short area of dense trees and leaves) into my friend Irina’s loft, speeding to safety. That was an experience I’ll never forget, and shortly after mine Aryaa and Naomi screamed their heads off just as I did.

The third day was an early morning wake up to walk up a big rock, a neighbor of Sigiriya, and get there in time for the sunset. The walk up wasn’t to say challenging, but rather testing of my focus in the dark: it was around 4 am in the morning when we starting going up and it was very dark, we had to carry flashlights. Not only, but there were big jumps and pull ups to be done in order to reach the top, but once we did, I was proud of my effort, and certainly did not regret it. The sunrise was one of the most beautiful I have seen in a long time, the view was something incomparable with others and was worth the hard work. The rest of the day flowed quite slowly, as we made our way to another eco lodge called the Other Corner, the difference was, this one had walls and an AC. Because we got there in a slightly inconvenient time to do anything, neither this nor that, we agreed that we would use this time to go in the pool, relax, and talk with friends. Of course, we had an option for a nightly activity after dinner to go and search for fish cats, but after the long day, everyone was too tired to go. To be honest, although I was tired in the moment, I regret not going because it was something that I wouldn’t experience again soon.

Our final day came, and we had a short plan for the morning before taking off back to Colombo: we had a cooking class at 11 am. During this whole trip, except the main highlight of art crafts and being chased by wasps, we ate a lot, almost 3 meals a day, and me being someone who eats once a day, wasn’t used to that. However, we had been doing it so much, that I became used to it and maybe my stomach even stretched? (if that’s a thing). The cooking class enriched my cultural knowledge of Sri Lankan cooking techniques, especially the sifting of the rice in a woven tray. Eating the lunch we made for ourselves felt nice, but at that point I had been full for several days. Finally, we left the Other Corner and headed the Colombo, and as anticipated, everybody was asleep.

This trip has been such an amazing cultural, historical, and artistic experience where I learned so much about art forms, famous identities, religious architecture, and so much more that I couldn’t possibly name. On top of it all, I also found new friends and connected with people I didn’t know before, and I am eternally grateful for it. Although there were some traumatic moments embedded in my mind forever (the wasp) and some difficult things, this trip is undoubtedly the best! Anyone going into G10 and DP1, I will always recommend this HeArt Trip, it is something that will widen your knowledges and, if you are an artist, allow appreciation for new artworks. I feel emotional looking back on this, and even concluding this post, but it is a memory I will cherish for a long time to come.