Here I am, stretched out on a comfy wooden sunbed in a hotel whose, eager to please staff, outnumber us about 4 to 1. Palms top a frame of creeping flowers, surrounding the glass-like pool. My hands are cushioned by Buffalo Grass.
The aptly named hotel Serenity, Tissamaharama got me thinking about the contrast of this to my first day in Sri Lanka.
The Gulf of Discomfort
“I was so desperately seeking some comfort in my first few days of travel,” I’d written. But to be honest it was more than that. There had been a moment when I thought about just staying on the plane. Sri Lankan Airlines had been comfortable and I knew this comfort would become scarce outside the cabin. “So maybe a few more movies, another nice meal and just call the whole thing off,” I thought.
Before me was a gulf of 100 days and over 40,000 kilometres to be travelled, and at the time I was fixating on something as trivial as the taxi from the airport to my accommodation.
I know I’m a traveller at heart. I knew it when camping in the Rocky Mountains of Canada. When the horn of a late night freight train was the only sound in the world. Its echoes from the mountain haunted my dreams and all around our electrified site were animals that could have been our ending. However much this had felt right, I was still obsessed with keeping my comfort zone. But why, when the most uncomfortable days in Sri Lanka had yielded the most amazing sights?
The Cycle of Unchange
I’m learning that it is an anxiety about doing things wrong. Very specifically being seen to do things wrong. So, being duped by a taxi, or sounding like an idiot while getting one, terrify me much more than the time I jumped off a bridge with a bunch of guys holding the rope I was hooked to.
My mind refuses to change in light of my experiences. I survived the jump (despite having to catch a plummeting counter weight with my feet). I survived a night in a ditch in Spain. And, after stone-walling the first few touts in Sri Lanka, walking outside and thinking “I’m not really going to walk out to the main road am I?” I swallowed hard and ended up bartering about 50% off the first price I’d been quoted. So I’d survived that too. But it hadn’t changed me. I was still seeking the correct procedure for everything.
I’d awkwardly fumbled through introductions with my deaf guesthouse host. Then I was immediately bitten by what I concluded was Sri Lanka’s biggest and most disease-filled mosquito. I resolved to retreat into the mosquito net to research “the procedure” for imminent death by malaria. This was despite having previously read Sri Lanka had been declared malaria-free since 2016! So the cycle continues.
Calcite Eyes
Before I departed the UK I spent a day looking round the Natural History Museum. It’s easy to find yourself searching for the meaning of things when confronted with the bones of 65 million years ago.
But strangely it was crystals from deep with in the Earth that triggered it in me. Calcite double refracts the light passing through it so there are two distinct images offset from one another. The crystals in my mind do the same. One view of truth and logic knew I wouldn’t die of malaria and tomorrow I’d try some basic sign language much to my host’s glee. The other distorted view was always the worst case scenario. It could not be dispelled, merely lived with.
Better Days
We are always changing. Whether you believe that seven year cell cycle that supposedly renders you an entirely new person, or that experience and age imperceptibly shift you toward new ways of thinking. There are great examples of conquering your anxieties such as in Lauren Juliff’s inspiring travel memoir How Not To Travel The World. But as for me, I think I will always be this way to some extent.
Some days are better though, like in Mirissa, sipping Lion Lager from a chilled glass. Thunderous waves like nothing I’ve seen are on steep ascent to the shore. The climb reduces them to tickles at your feet as you eat grilled squid from your sun lounger. Maybe later I’ll climb Parrot Rock… if I feel like moving.
Strip all the detail of the world back to three stark bands of sky, sea and sand and there in between it all you sit. Suddenly, it becomes so much easier to simply be yourself.
