Sri Lanka: Days 10-14

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 thing crossed off the bucket list, but the treatment of the elephants wasn't something I was comfortable with, so it is definitely a one time thing. For this reason we ruled out going to the elephant orphanage and went straight to lunch.

After our stop for lunch we headed to a tea factory, which was interesting to see after visiting a tea plantation, as we got to see the process from tea leaves to tea bags. After some more amazing cups of tea we went to a gem museum, seeing a similar process to what I'd seen in the gem mine on my second day in Sri Lanka- from mining the gems to creating the jewellery. I could've spent hours in the shop, but unfortunately everything was a little out of my price range!

To close a brilliant day we went to see a Kandian traditional Sri Lankan dance, involving a variety of radiant costumes, swallowing flames and walking on fire, and of course vibrant dancing.

We headed back to our hotel up in the mountains in Kandy where we chilled out around the pool before dinner. Unfortunately this is the point where my trip took a drastic turn, but better to separate the good and the bad, so a separate blog post to follow!
Now's a good time to emphasise how truly amazing those 14 days were. Volunteering at the orphanage is one of the best things I have ever and possibly will ever done, I learnt so much, and the fact I was able to travel, explore and meet the fantastic people I met along the way is an added bonus. Sri Lanka, you were INCREDIBLE. Until next time.

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