Hailing all the way from Kalutara, Fathima Aaliyah’s love for nature and passion for travel motivated her to begin running a travel blog full time along with her husband. In conversation with Brunch, she told us that her husband is always by her side no matter where she goes, and supports her in all her endeavours. “In fact, he is the one who motivated me to start this blog and even encourages my dreams of travelling the world one day,” she shared.
At first, there was no talk of starting a travel blog or anything like it; but once the two love birds met each other and started talking about what they had in common, they soon discovered that they shared a love of going on short trips. “We began embarking on small trips to nearby places and spent our weekends there. I would post a story or two on Instagram for fun, and eventually, with support from many people, it blossomed into a blog,” she told us, sharing how she entered the world of influencers.
“Since I was a child, I’ve always enjoyed going on long journeys – especially by train,” Aaliyah told us. So when started her career in Colombo, her absolute favourite part was the train ride she had to take from Kalutara to Colombo everyday.
Sharing their most recent travel memory, Aaliyah named it to be their trip to Idalgashinna. “As usual, we were getting ready to witness the typical sunrise, but when we got out of our tents, I witnessed the most mesmerising sunrises I had ever seen in my entire life,” Aaliyah gushed, and sharing some special moments from their last adventure, she added: “It was a majestic sunrise and the surrounding areas were covered by gorgeous, fluffy clouds. We literally felt like we were above the clouds!” The two had never expected or experienced something like it before, so she says it was something that turned out to be totally different from what she had imagined the place to be.
She also told us that when travelling, she’d never had anything that she would call “a bad experience”. In her opinion, every challenge they overcame was a lesson for them in the future, which made their new adventures nearly perfect.
She also took us down memory lane, and shared their first camping experience at Narangala. “We had no idea what camping was, how to plan, or how to check the routes. We just went, as one of our friends referred us to the place; so the four of us went on the journey,” she told us. Eventually, they got off at a particular town and it was drizzling, so thoughts of hiring tuks to reach the point where the hike starts arose. Unfortunately, Aaliyah told us, the driver misunderstood the path they had explained and he had dropped them at the opposite side of the mountain, which, she explained, led to a very hard and difficult path through a thick jungle. “We were trekking through the jungle for hours and hours, yet we couldn’t see an end,” she fretted. This is where it gets interesting. “We were hiking, and later, we realised that one of our friends, who was right behind me, was missing. We kept our backpacks in one place and started to search for him for hours, fighting with leeches on one side,” she said. She thanked the gods that after a few hours of frantic searching, they found him. Apparently, she shared, he had noticed two diverging paths splitting up and down and had assumed that they had taken the upper path and followed it, which, according to Aaliyah, they hadn’t.
This story only gets progressively worse. “Suddenly, there was no way to go. At a point, the foot path stopped. There was just no way! We were stuck in the middle of nowhere! On the other hand, it was getting dark. I was so scared that we would have to spend the night inside this huge, unknown jungle; we didn’t have any support from Google either,” she explained animatedly.
A few minutes later, her husband informed them that they had no choice except to make a path to the top by clearing the bushes and tree branches. Painting a picture of hope, Aaliyah said: “We saw a light coming from the top of the mountain, so we followed it to reach the top. In the morning we witnessed a beautiful sunrise and an amazing view that made us forget every struggle, pain and hardship.”
The next day, the group hiked down from the opposite side and met some villagers with whom they shared what had happened the day before. Aaliyah said that the villagers had all echoed that they were surprised and glad to see them alive. “They also told us that the jungle is controlled by a creature called Bodhilima and that whoever comes through the forest loses their path. The creature doesn’t like men and it kills them. As there was a girl in our group, we were saved; the creature is afraid of women. We were shocked to hear this story.”
All in all, Aaliyah believes it was a good lesson for them, and from that day on, if they select a place to visit, they make sure to collect all the details about the place and study different routes as well as try to contact a villager for more details and be aware of the weather, roads, public transportation, and other issues. She also recommended that anyone who wants to hike too, should stick to this advice.
Sharing more words of wisdom, Aaliyah highlighted one thing: “Please make sure to protect the place where you travel. Bring back whatever you take and dispose of it in the correct manner. It is heartbreaking to see how people behave on long weekends in the name of travelling. Nature is a place we should love the same way we do our homes.”
