Life Beyond the Wall

Emily’s Blog

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I am a 24 year old just trying to figure out my relative 3 minutes on Earth. I love the outdoors, travel, exercise, my pets, and the people I surround myself with.

  • Sri Lanka – The First Day

    In February 2025, my boyfriend and I found ourselves searching for a new travel adventure a little further afield than our earlier trips to the likes of Munich, Dublin, and Greece. With the last few months at Vet School looming in front of me , and many winter days attempting to blood sample cows ahead (a task made significantly more difficult when you can’t feel your fingers), I was gravitating towards a holiday with sun, sand, and new found flavours to fuel that feeling of something to look forward to. In my 24 years, I have discovered that I am pretty addicted to that feeling. After hours of scrolling various social media platforms and websites titled: “the best upcoming travel destinations in 2025”, we landed on Sri Lanka.

    The videos and posts then constantly filling my ‘For You Page’ promised untouched white sand beaches, surf havens, and brightly coloured Tuktuks beetling beneath dappled palms. I was drawn to the fact it seemed to be compared to Bali 10 years ago (although this description is not particularly popular with the local Sri Lankans), which to me indicated that it would be enough of an adventure but with less of a party island feel? But despite some much-needed and appreciated recommendations from friends, I still wasn’t sure what to expect, having never visited Asia before.

    Flights booked, Visas approved, and Tuktuk license carefully tucked away in the plastic wallet, we soon found ourselves changing flights at Doha and then landing in Colombo International AirPort.

    Bags ready at LHR

    On arrival, I was immediately struck by the overwhelming humidity, and as I changed into my shorts in the arrivals area, I hoped my pale legs didn’t look quite as reflective as they had in the bathroom mirrors. Tensions slightly high between Jacob and I, we made our way through the crowds to pick up our new SIM (we used Dialog which had great coverage across the country). I removed my earring to open the sim card slot on our phones, and reminded Jacob that once again, he’d be lost without me. Once out of the airport, we slung our bags into our shuttle kindly sent out to us by TukTuk Rental.com, and arrived at the TukTuk rental hub.

    My immediate impressions of Sri Lanka from the other side of the shuttle window was fairly in line with what I expected: busy roads filled with beeping vehicles, and rustic train tracks lined by palms dripping in swinging monkeys. Negombo was fairly built up so the true beauty of Sri Lanka’s landscapes that was about to follow was not yet obvious to us.

    At the TukTuk Rental office, we were offered a sweet and potent espresso, and waited in a small courtyard with other travellers in baggy trousers and leather necklaces playing cards. This rental company is probably the biggest in Sri Lanka, with tuktuks of all different colours just about everywhere, and you can see why. When we received our briefing video, the attention to detail was immense with no question left unanswered, making an intimidating prospect of driving a metal box along busy roads feel slightly more manageable. There were a few young gap-yah girls and even an older couple wearing schoffels listening keenly to the instructions, and although I hate to stereotype, we had to wonder how they’d get on…

    After the video, we made our way outside for a crash course in how to drive the TukTuk with our instructor Vina. Jacob looked pretty terrified in the rear mirror as I navigated the motorbike-like controls, with only a few stalls and shrieks as we braved the roads. And just like that, we were off on our 5 hour drive to our first destination: Sigiriya. The staff at the rental office looked slightly hesitant when we explained our plan to do this drive that day, having had about 3 hours of sleep on the overnight flight, but with our wide-eyed wonder that only a new adventure can bring, we could not be deterred.

    Slightly sceptical… but TukTuk attained!

    I have written in my notes from the first day that Jacob was actually pretty good with the driving and took to it straight away, so I feel it is only fair to give him the credit that he’s due. Nothing can quite describe the feeling of motoring along at 30mph with only the air between you and the surrounding landscapes, while a bus swerves past you at three times your speed! The horn doubles as an indicator here, and there’s definitely no such thing as a zebra crossing.

    Despite the slightly terrifying buzz of leaving Negombo, reaching the quieter roads provided sights that were genuinely breath-taking. The air was laced with scents of tobacco, fuel, mango, mint… and I soon realised it was genuinely quite similar to a home-store candle named “Indian Summer” – who’d have thought. We motored past rice fields, mountains with Buddha statues nestled in their trees, jungles, and many animals including cows and dogs (the obvious) and even mongoose and iguanas (less obvious, but very exciting!).

    View from the back seat

    A quick stop at one of the many P&Ss lining the roads gave us some much-needed energy (the vegetable roti was a real hit), and we filled our fuel tank several times, helped at each stop by the local staff. Although surprised to see a woman behind the wheel (when Jacob wasn’t hogging it), they waved happily and nothing was ever too much trouble.

    Eventually, we arrived at Sigiriya, where the mist and tropical atmosphere descended immediately. The mountain village was quieter than I expected, with bars and small restaurants dotted along the roads, slowly filling up with tourists coming back from a long days hiking or elephant safari. The famous Lion’s Rock was visible from the distance as we journeyed towards our hostel, The Travellers Place. We were greeted by an extremely welcoming host who showed us to our private room, a plain but comfortable double bed and en-suite, and had a restaurant named ‘The Little Hut’ recommended to us. We were told to drive down to dinner, as in the darkness there are tales of slightly angry wild elephants causing havoc, and after settling at our table (which was lucky to find in a very busy little place), we had our first taste of Sri Lankan curry and kotthu roti. This meal was absolutely delicious, and set the bar high for all khottus to come…

    Sigiriya – The Travellers Place
    The Little Hut

  • Why have I started this blog?

    Hello to anyone who has found themselves on my ‘Life Beyond the Wall’ blog – an inspired title based on the attempt to combine my name with something witty. Something that says ‘ this is what this blog is about’. Could the title have been better? Certainly. Does that mean I don’t feel it is an accurate representation of what I’d like this blog to be? Not necessarily. In both the literal meaning of Wall being my surname, and the metaphorical version of the walls being heavily curated around myself, I hope this blog will allow to dive beyond those walls and into life as I see it through my own eyes.

    As a 24 year old woman in a strange interlude between finishing university and moving to Australia to pursue a career, I find myself at an unexpectedly overwhelming and emotional time in my life where I am constantly questioning what it is that makes me, me. And seemingly more of a worry – who is it I want to be? I am at a crossroads of who I have been and who I am about to be, and although this could be said for every new day as a human, being in a literal waiting period makes this feel all the more obvious.

    Being a woman in your 20s can be intense and confusing at the best of times, with a plethora of media suggesting how that should look for all of us, shoved in our faces through our phones, our films, Netflix series’, and even forwarded on by peers or better yet, well-meaning family members. All this media contains the secrets and hot-tips to what we should all be up to in our 20s to stay slim, save money, eat well, avoid social media, live in the moment, try new things, be single, find a partner, shave our heads… the options are limitless. The fact that the options are limitless is maybe the exact reason my head feels so full I have turned to the wonders of blogging.

    So why don’t we start with a bit about me. What words do I feel best reflect me as I am right now? Even as I think about what I am going to write next, I am slightly hesitant based on the clashes of how I really feel with how I feel I come across. It is staggering that we are so in tune to the opinions of others and what they think of us, that we will go to such lengths to even deny our own opinions of ourselves, despite being the only ones that live in our own minds day to day and know the intention behind everything we do.

    To kick things off, I am a deeply ‘feeling’ person. I am ruled by my heart, which often clashes with my ambitious and action-oriented mind. I dive into love deeply. I can be swept away by grief. I love nothing more than the smell of the outside air and the wondrous sunrises/sunsets that paint the skies each day. I feel a huge affinity for animals, and there is nothing that can bring tears to my eyes more than an innocent, panicked creature coming into contact with a massive, obnoxious car. I am a vet, which is a career choice driven by this love for animals as well as the need to achieve and challenge myself (I went to an all-girls grammar school, can you tell?). I am a netballer, a painter, writer, runner, triathlete (tenuous), daughter, sister, girlfriend, perfectionist, and most of all, I am literally just a girl. As you may have guessed by now, I am also a waffler….

    I was once told by a good friend/mentor that really we are all just ants on a floating rock and therefore effectively the life we lead is pretty insignificant, but what makes it significant is the fellow ants we surround ourselves with. When you think about life this way, it doesn’t even really matter what makes me ‘me’, because what has really transformed my life so far is the people. It is the people who make me excited to face the day, make me laugh until my face hurts, write me letters that make tears roll down my face, bring me cups of tea, send pictures of waterfalls or just something that made them think of me, and ultimately make me feel just about every emotion i could ever imagine being lucky enough to feel. It is these people and the experiences I’ve had because of them which have led me to start writing about my life, because I want to remember every bit of it.

    In this blog, I hope to cover some of my life so far with a few travel journals previously scribbled in a notes app, and reflect on some other topics that have recently occupied my thoughts.

    To those reading, I hope you find something you enjoy, and even if there are no readers, I hope this can provide me with a documented outlook for me to look back on while I marvel at the life I’ve led.