Logging In

I am sitting in a tuk-tuk carelessly sneaking through the chaotic traffic of Colombo way faster and way more dangerously than it should be. All around me I pass by thousands of people looking busy with their everyday lives. Drivers, beggars, porters, passengers, policemen with white gloves, buddhist monks dressed in orange, schoolboys in uniform, street food sellers, and hordes of ordinary people just going somewhere. I wonder what they do all day. I wonder what their reality is like. I came to Sri Lanka to experience first hand the spirit of a country in which everyone these days seems to be interested in.

- Franz Orsi

I like being in places like this, places were everything is in the making and that somehow give me a glimpse of what our future will look like. They’re called emerging economies, I call them places of tomorrow. For me, they resemble the way most of our world will look in a few decades from now. For the good and for the bad. They serve as open-air labs for social experiments in finding alternative paths to a new reality. For sure Sri Lanka is typical of this type of place with its booming economy, increasingly recognised as a top tourism destination and with a fast-growing hype, based on Instagram stories and fashionable shots of cool people and hipster-surfers coming for its mellow waves and tropical beaches. So here I am to better understand Sri Lanka, its waves and its hype. Sri Lanka, in fact, is an interesting and varied country, home to a wide array of cultures, traditions, ethnic groups and languages; it also has the highest biodiversity density in Asia. While the culture, history and wildlife are a big draw, the main attractions for surfers are the variety of waves, warm water, and reliable Indian Ocean swells. After a few days spent visiting the capital city, I decided to travel down south in search for some surf.