Travelling Ari

In true Ari style, it was all very dramatic and very sudden. One minute I was sat on the poolside stargazing and joking around. The next minute I was upstairs doubled over in the most indescribable crippling pain I've ever been in all down my left side, before passing out on the bed for the rest of the night. Even rushing to hospital the next morning I thought nothing of it, and when the doctor said I needed to be admitted, I asked how long for because I was due to walk up the beautiful Lion Rock, something I'd been looking forward to the most about my trip. Unfortunately for me, the answer was 'a few days.' That same day I was moved to a hospital closer to where I was based, 5 hours down south. It was there I spent my first night in hospital. In Sri Lanka there are two types of hospitals- private, and government, where similarly to the UK government hospitals are funded by the government, and private hospitals are funded for by the patient. Most of the p...

Unfortunately, these few days that commenced our weekend away were spent feeling too unwell to do much. The first week of the trip I hadn't felt great but still tried to do everything, down to FOMO (fear of missing out), but my health started to take a turn at this point. I managed to get to my project most afternoons, and snuck in another trip to Hikaduwa for pizza, cocktails, and midnight swims. Despite deep down knowing something wasn't quite right health wise, I decided with 12 other volunteers to spend the weekend in Kandy, something I'd set my mind to in the midst of planning my trip a year before I even got there. Another early morning and a 5 hour bus journey later, we arrived in Kandy for our first activity: elephant riding. Another thing I'd been desperately looking forward to, however the actual experience was most uncomfortable and was spent clinging on to the poor thing for dear life. I'm glad to have done it: another thin...

In the early hours of the morning, a mini bus clattered up the bumpy road leading to our house to pick us up to go for our first weekend away. And given that, in the end, it turned out to be my only weekend travelling in Sri Lanka, it didn't disappoint. After a few hours drive up through beautiful mountains we stopped to do white water rafting, which although I was terrified about doing turned out to be absolutely awesome, and highly amusing due to lots of screaming and falling all over the boat. After a quick change and some lunch, we continued our journey through the mountains until we reached the coldest point in Sri Lanka, at a mere 13 degrees. It was here we went to St Claire's tea center, where they pick and produce the tea. We then continued our journey to our hotel, where ate and waited around to find that there wasn't enough room for all of us, so we ended up moving to a particularly cold hotel where I used blankets and duvets for the first time in Sri Lanka! ...

By day 4 I felt well and truly settled into the Sri Lankan way, and spent the next couple of days doing some exploring and spending time with my new housemates. One morning before project we spent the morning on Ambalangoda beach, our most local beach at a mere 10 minutes tuk tuk away. At the time I was in Sri Lanka and the area I was in, the sea was very rough and choppy so difficult if not impossible to swim in, but it was nice to have a morning attempting (and failing) to tan. The beach literally looked like a postcard, with bright turquoise sea and white sand, dotted with palm trees. We then spent the afternoon at projects before a brilliant if not eventful house party at one of the volunteer houses. The next day we went a little further afeild towards Hikaduwa and visited the Tsunami Photo Museum, a place created and run by an inspiring family in the very same spot the tsunami of 2004 took over their home and their lives. Their makeshift house faces the coastline a...