SC-S32/W2-"Today's Writing, Tomorrow's Memories."—The Travel Diary.

pasindukd (61)in Steem For Lifestyle • 9 days ago (edited)

Hello Steemians!

Today, I am really happy to join the Steemit Challenge Season 32 Week 2 from the Steem For Lifestyle community. A special thanks to the @mahadisalim and @wirngo for hosting such an engaging competition.

For those who don't know, Vesak is a very special and beautiful festival in Sri Lanka where we celebrate the birth, enlightenment, and passing of the Buddha with lights, lanterns, and kindness. This diary entry is from June 2nd. It is a great way to save a trip as a special memory for later, so I am going to share my diary from our trip to see the lights.

_{Heading out for our trip!}

My day started pretty early. I woke up and started my day by brushing my teeth and getting everything ready, but I couldn't just relax yet because I had some classes to attend. After a quick breakfast, I went to my morning classes. I kept thinking about our plans for the evening, so I kept checking the time. As soon as classes were over in the afternoon, I didn't want to waste any time hanging around or getting stuck in heavy traffic. I decided to take my usual shortcut along the train tracks to get home quickly, freshen up, and get ready to go.

_{Walking home on the train tracks shortcut.}

Our road trip started right after that. My brother, cousins, and I met up, got on our bikes, and headed out while it was still daylight. We covered a distance of about 15 kilometers, and it took us approximately one hour to ride our bikes to reach the main festival area. Taking the bikes was a smart move because the main road was already getting packed with vehicles. We were able to zoom through the traffic without any trouble. Since we knew we would be doing a lot of walking later to see the sights, we wanted to find some food stalls first to get some energy.

_{The long line for the food stalls.}

In Sri Lanka, we have a cool tradition called "Dansal" (or Dansala). These are free food stalls set up by locals or families along the roads. Anyone passing by can stop and get free food, snacks, or drinks. It is a really nice way to share and show kindness during the festival. Even during the day, there were plenty of these stalls open. We parked our bikes and joined the crowd to enjoy the festival feeling. We stopped to take some photos and tried out a few different stalls along the way.

Ice Cream	We started with some sweet ice cream to cool down from the afternoon heat.
Buns	These soft buns went perfectly with the ice cream.
Manioc	Next, we tried some local food. This boiled manioc tasted great.
Spicy Chickpeas	We also had some spicy chickpeas (kadala) to keep us going.
Belimal Tea	We finished our food crawl with a warm cup of herbal tea, which was delicious.

After eating all that food, we rode our bikes around for a couple of hours to see the crowds. When it started to get dark, we went home for a bit to check on everything and help the family. We went out to the garden to hang up two small lanterns that we had made, and we turned them on as the sky got dark.

_{Our home lanterns at night.}

Once our home lanterns were glowing, we jumped back on our bikes and headed out to the streets for the night. The whole town looked totally different because everything was lit up with colorful electric lights. That is when we saw a huge electric lantern display. It was so big and cool. We just stood there for over an hour, watching the lights change colors and flash in a fun rhythm.

_{The big display lighting up the night.}

It took us about 1 hour in a line to get in to the place but it was worth it and It was so cool that I took a quick video of the flashing lights. It really captures how lively everything was that night. You can see it here:

Between the morning classes, our 15-kilometer bike ride, eating all that delicious food, and seeing the beautiful lights, it was a really great trip. By the time we finally got home, we were tired but very happy. We sat down for a late dinner together and talked about everything we saw. After eating, I brushed my teeth, jumped into bed, and went to sleep! It was the perfect end to a fun day.

Device Used: Samsung Galaxy M15 5G

All photos are original and captured on my Samsung M15.

I really enjoyed reading these travel diaries for the contest! It was great to see everyone's different journeys. Here are the links to the posts I visited:

I would like to invite @sammy1109, @pandora2010, and @marito74 to check out this contest and share their own entries!

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next one.

#traveldiary-s32w2 #steemexclusive #thediarygame #srilanka

9 days ago in Steem For Lifestyle by pasindukd (61)

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mahadisalim (80)modVerified 🇧🇩 club5050 9 days ago

Hi @pasindukd, thank you for participating in the "Week-02: "Today's Writing, Tomorrow's Memories."— Travel Diary." . We have assessed your assignment post , below captures our assessments.

Thank you for participating in the Travel Diary Challenge. You traveled around the city in the afternoon after your class and recorded some beautiful pictures and videos to keep as memories in your diary. It was a very nice presentation.
You wrote your diary following the rules of the challenge, so it was a very nice presentation.
You have also enhanced the beauty of the diary by using Markdown in the text and images.