It started as a joke

and now we're in Sri Lanka

Jul 29, 2026

Hello from Sri Lanka!

It started as a joke.

Three months ago, four friends were sitting together in Bir when we discovered that all our birthdays fall within one month, from 26th July to 27th August.

One of us joked: let’s move to another country to celebrate.

Somehow that joke turned into flight bookings.

We landed in Sri Lanka five days ago.

Four of us are spending one month living together, building our businesses, learning from each other, exploring, working out, eating loads of delicious yet healthy food, having heartfelt conversations and having an absurd amount of fun.

For us, this is an experiment in building a freedom-first life with a chosen community.

What lets us say yes to something this mad is that all four of us are independent workers — a digital entrepreneur, a writer-photographer, a life design coach, and me.

And what makes it even more ridiculous is that we're not childhood friends. We met only two years ago at a travel writing workshop in Bir and had probably hung out together five or six times before deciding that living in another country together for a month sounded perfectly reasonable.

So this is also an experiment in building friendships in your 30s, which, if you've tried, you know is not easy.

This trip marks so many firsts for me. First time living with three friends under one roof. First time celebrating my birthday in a new country. First time travelling abroad with friends for an entire month.

When I started building a freedom-first life five years ago, this wasn’t even an idea in my wildest dreams. And yet here I am, living it. I’m slowly realising that one of the most beautiful things about building flexibility into your life is that you create room for serendipity.

You can say yes to a crazy idea. And somewhere along the way, you start meeting other people who can say yes too. That’s how we ended up here.

Here’s how our days look now:

We’ve rented a huge villa in a quiet village in the south of Sri Lanka. There are zero tourists around and the beach is a 5-min walk away. The two-storey house has enough space for all four of us to work comfortably. It's surrounded by so many trees that green has become the default colour for my eyes. Calling it our own mini jungle wouldn’t be an overstatement.

Our mornings start with breakfast we prepped the night before — oats soaked in a protein shake with nuts and seeds. Then we disappear into our laptops, surfacing occasionally when someone says, “Guys, I need help thinking through something.”

In between, there’s coffee. Lots of it. Thankfully, all four of us are coffee people. Blue Tokai was kind enough to send us enough coffee to last the month, so one corner of our house has naturally evolved into our office-cafe-conversation space.

On our first night, we stumbled onto a tiny cafe called Father's Kitchen, run by a local family. We've gone back for lunch every single day since. Different Sri Lankan curries and rice, everything cooked in coconut milk with zero oil. Some of the tastiest food I've ever eaten.

We’re back to work for another couple of hours. Then, we go to the gym or for a run. I went to the gym after more than a year, thanks to these people for pushing me to move my lazy ass.

In the evenings, we go to the beach for sunset, have dinner at the same local cafe and wind down with long, unhurried conversations. Then we prepare breakfast for the next day and retire.

Nothing about our life here is extraordinary.

It's ordinary life. Just somewhere new.

And I think that’s what I’ve always loved about travelling this way.

You don’t need to pause your life to travel. You bring your life with you. Except now, when you close your laptop, there’s a beach five minutes away. There’s a new country outside your door. And there are three people sitting across the table who are building their own versions of unconventional lives too.

We’ve also done something I particularly love.

Each of us wrote down what we’re currently struggling with and what we’d like to learn from the others.

Between the four of us, there’s experience in entrepreneurship, photography, writing, content, personal branding, coaching, life design, fitness and a dozen other things.

So over the next month, we’re deliberately setting aside time to teach each other.

I love that this is not just a trip we’re taking together. We’re helping each other become better at the lives we’re building.

Five days is obviously far too early to declare this experiment successful.

It’s entirely possible that by Day 27 we’re tired of each other and desperately want to go back home. But right now, I’m sitting in this house in Sri Lanka thinking about how unlikely all of this was.

Four people walked into the same travel writing workshop two years ago. They kept loosely crossing paths. One afternoon, somebody made a joke. And everyone said yes. That’s it. That’s how this month happened.

Know someone who’ll enjoy reading this? Send it across.

See you next week with more stories from this little jungle!

Love,
K