Sri Lanka and My Plastic Camera Memories

There’s no reason I should have ended up in Sri Lanka, honestly. I never applied to go to the TBC Asia conference. After World Travel Market in London, I figured I’d head directly back to Istanbul and start settling in after four and half months of motion.

And yet, on a week’s notice, I did go to Sri Lanka. And this trip I never planned to take became the greatest experience I’d had in a long time.

What a whirlwind.

Jeff from Latitude 34 summed it up best for me: “Sri Lanka reminded me why I travel, TBCAsia reminded me why I blog.”

I have oodles to write about Sri Lanka, about the sites, the culture, and the experiences. Yet it’s impossible to leave out the personal side of my time there and the rush of feelings that came with this trip.

I live abroad and travel frequently, but sometimes it’s easy to forget the magic of all that. Especially when few of my trips this year have been to new places—Malaysia in January was the most special and gave me the chance to rest and refocus (and eat everything amazing); Greece was new, but the point of the trip was mostly TBEX; I barely saw London during WTM; my trips to Prague and the USA and throughout Turkey were all wonderful, but were in the three countries I’ve already lived in, and lacked that swooning spark of discovery.

Sri Lanka was never on my radar, was never part of my plan. Heading there on such short notice is probably the most spontaneous trip I’ve taken this year (or ever). Touring in a convoy of 40+ bloggers is not my optimal travel mode. And yet, I found so much friendship there among the travel bloggers, so much sense stimulation in a country that was new for me, such a swooping and uplifting affirmation of WHY I travel and WHY I blog. I felt immersed in this crazy love, constantly.

Maybe such a last-minute opportunity allowed me to keep sight of the fact that being there was a gift. I found myself constantly wrapped in conversations throughout the days that were so electric and inspiring that I didn’t want to sleep. I burned through rolls of film as the lush green countryside sprawled out beyond my windows. I stayed in beautiful Cinnamon properties and drank fresh coconuts and laughed at stupid jokes. Every night I fell asleep thoroughly exhausted and still buzzing. It’s amazing how much life can be crammed into a few short days.

Towards the end of my time in Sri Lanka, I was sitting alone in the warm rain at the Galle Jazz Festival, listening to a raucous French swing band play Gershwin and Bechet tunes. My friends had bailed for the hotel but I wanted to wait a little longer, to take the space to sort through all the emotions I was feeling. I was leaving in a day and a half and I wasn’t ready. But I was so absurdly happy, even as my shoes got wet, even as I sat alone. I was in a beautiful town listening to beautiful music in muggy heat, and I still had that day and a half to soak in this life. I nearly cried, I was so overwhelmed with joy.

The rollercoaster of sense-memories from Sri Lanka have taken time to sort through.  I reflect to separate the threads of what I learned, what I felt, what I saw, how to convey all of it. I spent weeks after the trip surrounded by film negatives of hundreds of images, piecing my memory together with the photographs I captured.

The images throughout this post are all from the Holga, my fickle and fantastic plastic toy camera. I believe it captures the experience of memory better than any of my other film cameras. Sometimes the light leaks in or the frames overlap or the image blurs, but all these irregularities reflect the way we remember. Holga images look likes dreams. At the end of every trip, I always wish I’d taken more Holga photographs—though the unpredictability can be frustrating (especially when the images don’t develop), there’s nothing as evocative as the best frames from my plastic camera. I have a LOT of pictures of Sri Lanka, and many of them are quite wonderful. But none of them look like the Holga photographs. These are snapshots of memory, that elusive and unreliable thing.

Sri Lanka left me inspired, invigorated, renewed. I will hold on tight to those memories—this is why I do what I do, after all.

I visited Sri Lanka as part of the TBCAsia conference. My stay was made possible by Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts and Sri Lankan Airlines, as well as the Professional Travel Blogger Association. All opinions are my own, naturally.