When travelling leads you to a place you always knew you belonged...

Our diesel van jolts along behind thick black clouds of burnt gas. Brightly painted buses belching a dark trail behind them, a guide back to the start if they were ever lost. A tuk-tuk buzzes past, whizzing between traffic in an infinite race to be first. The heat in the van grows stifling. I open the window to allow the outside in.

To the background of jangling music resounding from the tinny speakers, the noises of a tropical island city coordinate to create a symphony. The traffic runs uncontrolled, unrestrained horns relaying messages in Morse. Laughter. The beat of Pineapples! Who wants pineapples!?

The tangy scent of coconut oil, mingled with burning rubber tyres, fills my nostrils like a sweet and musky perfume. Along the road, juicy green vegetation clings to the edges of bitumen, reminding humanity that there is only the smallest foothold that is ours– the fingers of the vines only a whim away from taking back manmade tracks, leaving them untraceable.
Elderly women sitting street side, ward off impending rice paddies sporting tiny sari blouses. Their small rounded bellies protrude over expertly folded fabric wrapped around and around their hips.

Upon pulling into a hidden driveway, disguised as an emerald jungle wall, our driver turns. Grinning with brilliant white, he announces ‘You have now arrived to Home’ and a small gesture of hand over heart.

Home is where the traffic runs direct; here it is languid, tumbling like a heavy river of steel and dust. Home is a grid of streets and avenues. Tidy fences. Terraced houses. Privacy. This place is organic; twisting and winding, structures melting into the environment– what difference is a porch pillar to a palm trunk? Roof tiles to coconut husks? Neighbours to family?

Home is an island expansive enough to reach two oceans but is meticulously organized and rigid. It was planned and built. This island, a tiny glimmering jewel fallen forgotten from a Maharaja’s purse, is vibrant and free, flowing and pulsating. This place holds a seed and from that tiny seed spills forth creatures, food, passion and life– vibrant and saturated– all molding itself to the tiny island landscape. The minute blooms bringing light to every soul produced. This seed was spawning and had already rooted itself inside me– the buds rapidly growing through my body.

Yes, Australia is called home, but our driver was right– here in Sri Lanka my heart had arrived.
I will never forget the day I introduced my heart to its home.