Sri Lanka, 2016.
My skin is laced with a thin layer of sweat, dirt sticks to patches of my exposed arms leaving pools of grime that I’m too tired to rub off. My body aches and my shoulders are rubbed raw from the straps of a backpack that I really wish I’d paid a little more for. A rumble escapes my belly and I’m acutely aware all I’ve eaten is a cereal bar I found squished to an inch of its life at the bottom of the aforementioned backpack. I should be miserable. But, for the first time ever really, I feel like I am exactly where I am meant to be.
I feel alive.
I take in a deep breath and fill my lungs with the dense, hot air that surrounds me and think to myself ‘I can’t believe I’m here.’ Hands grasped firmly on the railing next to me, I lean forward pushing my body outside the open train doors. Eyes wide, I try to take it all in: the vast, rolling countryside; the seemingly never-ending tea fields; the feeling of flying through such breathtaking landscapes.
It’s 2016 and I am on the train from Kandy to Ella, Sri Lanka. Up until this moment, I hadn’t had a clue what I was doing. I’ve always been a little bit lost. Growing up, my grannie used to exclaim ‘It’s such a pity Laura, that you’re not interested in anything.’ And I began to believe it; I had no real passion, no drive in life, no direction. I suppose she wasn’t wrong, at the time at least, I genuinely couldn’t envision the future for myself that everyone else seemed to suggest I should want. So I stopped trying.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamt of living in a VW on a beach or kayaking through the Adriatic, maybe working as a waitress in a remote hut in the Alps. Trying to visualise a life that involved staying in one spot, chained to a desk, felt suffocating. But the itchy feet of a thirteen-year-old wasn’t something anyone took seriously and, over time, I resigned myself to following the status quo. University. Get a job. Grow up.
In 2015, one of my best friends moved to Sri Lanka. Her updates were erratic and we’d go for weeks without a word before suddenly receiving photos of a secluded beach she’d visited over the weekend or a sunset where the rainbow of oranges blazed so bright, my eyes burned through the phone. Six months after she touched down, I’d scraped together enough money from my waitressing gig (not in the Alps, sadly), to afford a nine-day trip to visit her. And it was this trip that changed my life.
I’m shoved sharply by the man behind me as he loses his balance. He smiles and mumbles an apology as I move out of the way, signalling for him to take my spot in the doorway. As he fumbles past me, I realise one of us smells ripe. In all likelihood, it’s probably both of us; it’s an unavoidable consequence of travelling, you’re always in need of a shower. I realise I’m not bothered. Something that would embarrass me at home, I wear like a badge of honour, my sweat-stained clothes acting as a bizarre trophy that signals to people ‘I belong here, I’m doing this.’
My friends sit next to me, rotating between our seats and stealing more time hanging precariously from the train. We are largely silent, comfortable enough in each other’s presence to simply be; enjoying the journey with no real need to interrupt it with trivial talk. I don’t know if they had the same sort of life-affirming experience as I did but my friend spent the next few years yo-yoing to and from Sri Lanka, so I imagine she was as captivated as me.
The train takes upwards of six hours to get to Ella from Kandy, which in the UK would be the most unbearable situation you could imagine. But, at that moment, six hours wasn’t enough. I wanted to stay put in the feeling of contentment. After a lifetime of not quite fitting in anywhere, the sudden stillness that had settled in me was intoxicating.
As we pulled into Ella, I had a sense of belonging. I knew what I wanted for myself now and that, without a doubt, I did have interests and a passion alight within me – it just wasn’t what I was supposed to want.
Pulling my bag straps over my pink, tender shoulders, I looked around the train for one final time and thought to myself how strange it is that seemingly inconsequential things can change the trajectory of your life. And so, my love affair with travel was finally cemented. From that moment on, I had a path I was ready to embark on and the rest of my life to make it work.
Feet firmly on new soil, I set off and never looked back.
LJ x
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