Week Without Walls- Highlands Adventure

Once a year all the OSC grades from 5-11 go on a trip known as Week Without Walls, where we head to different parts of Sri Lanka to experience the unique environment, culture and attractions of the region for a five day period. This year, my last year for the trip, I was chosen for the Highlands trip, where we hike the Sri Lankan highlands, taking pictures of the flora, fauna and landscapes. The idea that this will be one of my last school trips before we dive  deep into the IB is depressing, but I am determined to make the best of it.

We visited a number of locations, many of which were gloriously and frustratingly high, supremely outdoorsy, and over all very exciting. Below I write about my favorite

locations and activities,

The Camp -We began with a day and a night at a camp, we began the day with a long hike to this site, the best thing about it was that it was filled with many, many dogs, and great skyscapes.

The Orphanage- This was our next and longest occupied site, it was to put it lightly, not great… Hence why the class decided to kindly call it, the orphanage, and sometimes not so kindly, the asylum. Here we played hide and seek, told scary stories, and played dozens upon dozens of games of chess. Hide and seek was great until one of our classmates said they saw a leopard and while some ran for cover, some ran for their cameras, no luck however. Chess wise and scary story wise I was more successful. We had many other special experiences here, there is something quite strange in seeing a large samba stag that could run me through easily running away from me as if I were a leopard stalking a kill. At night and through the evening the mist gathered across the planes surrounding the house, I tried to run at and see the mist up close, but as could be imagined the haze was significantly lighter the closer you got, but then when your far enough away and you turn back to where you were, you realize that the mist is all around you. We also made sure to get lots of pictures of the starry sky and played with light photography. The temperature was also quite pleasant.

Kirigalpota (Horton Planes)- We hiked for hours and hours through planes and trees, up hills and over rocks, I spent most of this time talking with classmates and quite enjoyed it. The scenery was quite unique to the rest of Sri Lanka due to the significantly colder climate, it was all quite beautiful.

What Did I learn?

Our primary purpose on this trip was to explore and understand the complex ecosystem of the Sri Lankan highlands, and for me this was as successful as could have been reasonably hoped. I say it that way because truly an ecosystem is too complicated, it has too many interrelated, shifting components, too many variables… there is the altitude, the climate, the season, the specific species of the area, the historical and present human impact… too complicated to be fully understood in the space of one trip.

This specific ecosystem especially so for its complicated relationship with humans, it faces heavy tourism, some amount of habitation depending on the section of the ecosystem, it faces the modern impacts of acid rain and global warming, and besides all that it was during the days of Sri Lanka’s colonization by the British used as a hunting resort during which time they decided to, besides other things, introduce different species of fish into the river. This ecosystem also cannot be understood in relation to other areas in Sri Lanka, you see the altitudinal elevation of it is significantly higher than anywhere else in Sri Lanka. This difference has resulted in the presence of numerous flora and fauna that cannot be found anywhere else in Sri Lanka. While I, with little understanding of plants and vegetation couldn’t find very many specific examples; I can say that all together the impact of these differences on the landscape of the area are startling when compared to the rest of Sri Lanka.

The Dunning-Kruger effect put simply, is the problem that people credit themselves with greater knowledge or expertise on a topic they are not knowledgeable about because they lack the knowledge of the topic to know what they do not know, the knowledge to know what more there is to know. The reason I mention this is because I find that while I have learnt a great deal on this trip, truly it was just enough to understand how little I know and understand about the workings of a complex ecosystem. An example of this is the fact that I now know that due to their sensitivity to heat and other such factors, the presence of frogs is a major indicator of health in an ecosystem, but all this does is leave me with questions like “how significant is the absence of frogs from an ecosystem?”, “what other such indicators are there?”, “what purpose do the frogs serve in the environment?”, “can damage to an ecosystem be reversed and would that bring the frogs back?” etc. Another significant example of this was when I saw the impact of altitude and the factors influenced by it on the height and scale of the same species of tree from the top to the bottom of the totupola mountain, while trees to the bottom were significantly larger than me, that same tree closer to the top may have shrunk to my shoulder. Because of this I feel that I have built my understanding of ecosystems, developed new skills, but I know I still have a long way to go. But again, what more could have been reasonably hoped for from a week-long exploration of a subject with little research and study? Just a primer, just a start.

Broader Note

This was a very exciting trip filled with a number of exciting activities, though I would have to say the thing I enjoyed most was learning more about my classmates. It was quite physically straining as there were numerous hikes throughout the trip, and it was also mentally engaging as there were many new sites and experiences. Overall my greatest learning from this trip was on overcoming challenges, while it is a simple lesson that you hear often, nothing teaches you that there is nothing that cant be overcome if you just put one foot after another as effectively as a mountain.