You know when you come across an event, place, or simply look at a photo and think, “I feel called there”? That’s how I felt when I first saw a photo that my friend, Elliott, posted on Instagram of Sunshinestories Surf Camp &Yoga Retreat in Sri Lanka
Two Swedish travelers, Linn and Petter, set out on a backpacking adventure when they found a place that felt like home, Sri Lanka. After requesting to finish their University degrees from abroad, they moved to Sri Lanka full-time and invited friends and family to stay with them. This quickly grew into other travelers coming to stay and Sunshinestories was born.
Sunshinestories attracts like-minded people from around the world and is built on the foundations of good surf, yoga, food and people. Their passion for life and community continued on to build their lifestyle concept hotel Ceylon Sliders down the road from Sunshinestories.
Linn and Petter’s story shows that you can create a life that is unique to you.
Meet Linn and Petter…
Where are you in the world?
We live in Ahangama on the south west coast of Sri Lanka. That’s also where our retreat Sunshinestories is based and our hotel Ceylon Sliders is down the beach road in the next little fishing village, Weligama.
How did you go from having the idea of creating Sunshinestories to making it a reality?
Me (Linn) and Petter met in upper secondary school when we were 18. It was love at first sight as we both shared the same dream of exploring the world. We grew up by the ocean in a small village south of Sweden and had bigger plans for our lives.
The following year when we graduated, in 2009, we went on our first 6 month trip. We had both studied photography in school and started the blog sunshinestories.com as a way to share our travel photography
This wasn’t very usual back in the days, with a couple blogging together and posting photos. We don’t want to claim that we were pionering that, but we managed to get a lot of media attention and several brands sponsored our travels such as Bing Surfboards, Billabong, Sea to summit, Seea, and Fjällräven to name a few.
The photography also came in handy when we traveled through Central America shooting hotels and villas in exchange for staying there. We traveled to South Africa, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Guatemala, Laos, and Thailand to name a few. We started interviewing the inspiring people we met along the way to try and figure out, what made a good life?
We traveled and worked for 3 years before we started university and settled in Malmö, south of Sweden. Petter started a three year media and communication bachelor and I started Information architecture with the goal as a bachelor in computing. Malmö was the perfect place for two nomads but our travel bug bite was itching. Thanks to our side jobs as freelance media creators, we had the chance to travel on every school holiday we had. On the Christmas breaks we went on month long trips back to Sri Lanka where we knew the waves and culture. When writing our last thesis and finishing up our last courses, we got the green light from University to do so abroad and we packed up our apartment and moved to Sri Lanka the autumn of 2014.
Photo @mitchfongphoto
Looking for a place to live in our new country, we found the old colonial villa in the jungle of Ahangama on the south coast of Sri Lanka. The house was too big so we invited friends and family to come stay. Before we knew it ,we had to hire staff and the house was a bed & breakfast with guests from around the world. With a hashtag on instagram and our travel blog, we got super busy. We noticed the demand of doing the same things as we did; surf, yoga, eating healthy and exploring the local culture. From that, the idea of Sunshinestories surf and yoga retreat was born. It felt like everything we have been doing just came together. We opened up the doors as a surf & yoga retreat in November 2015 and got an amazing response. Many of the guests that came were old blog readers who had been following our journey.
A year later (late 2016) we opened up Ceylon Sliders a lifestyle concept hotel,Cafe in Weligama and Weligama surf shop. Situated beachfront, Ceylon Sliders also builds upon the lifestyle by the sea as well as being a hub for people to meet and create. It’s become kind of a hub for hosting surfers, artists and creatives from around the island and the world. In the courtyard lies a small café and on the rooftop and out front a little shop with some handpicked items for the traveller. This also made it possible for us to work with some of the people we met during our travels and we’re proud to sell Quality Peoples t-shirts, Seea suits and Bing Boards to name a few.
Photo @dylangordon
Photo @ceylonsliders
What is it about Sri Lanka that drew you in?
The waves, the people the empty beaches. Sri Lanka is, and was even more a few years ago, an undiscovered paradise.
We discovered Sri Lanka on one of our first backpacking trips as nineteen year olds. We traveled along the south coast for a month. It was just after the war had ended and there was a melancholic feel to the whole island.. I remember we didn’t meet a single Swede and very little tourists. It felt like traveling back in time.
Continuing our vagabonding trips through countries like Bali, Thailand and Costa Rica meeting a lot of inspiring expats who had moved and started up a new life, we often said ”I wish we were here 10 years ago.” We then realized Sri Lanka was that place. A place where we could still have a shot at creating a life for ourselves. We moved here in 2014 with the hopes to finish our university degrees, instead we ended up starting the foundation to what later became Sunshinestories just a year later.
Photo @mrbradgolden
Photo @lachlanjdempsey
How did you combine both of your unique talents, ideas and passions to bring Sunshinestories to life?
We basically took everything we loved and packaged it into a week long retreat and made a kickass experience out of it. With focus on really good surf coaching, yoga, food and a connection to the real Sri Lanka. All of our experiences through our whole life came together – the service mindset we learnt working for Petter’s family restaurant “G Swenson’s” in Torekov, the photography & media skills we’ve been freelancing as, the people we’ve met and got inspired by during the travels, and the blog – our own little know how of what drives the travel industry these days. Most importantly, we have hired the best people we could find to be a part of our dream. These hand picked people and a lot of work to perfect the experience makes Sunshinestories what we envisioned it to be.
Photo @raskal
What is your ideal lifestyle?
Wake up early and get out for a surf as the sun is rising, if the waves are not perfect maybe do some yoga. Come back for breakfast around 8, already caught lots of fun waves and had a good start to the day in the ocean. Start work around 8:30-9, catch up with the big bosses at our two companies and plan some fun projects together. Depending on what’s going on, wind down sometime in the afternoon and spend the evening working with creative stuff or hanging out with family, our dogs, or our friends.
Photo @alejoachaval
What advice would you give to someone who wants to create their own unique lifestyle, even if it’s perhaps different from the ‘norm’?
First of all you need to figure out what your dream is. You need to be determined and put down a lot of hard work. Nothing comes for free. Believe in yourself. At the same time you need to be fluid, go with the flow as there is no one way. Grab every opportunity that takes you closer to your dream. And lastly you need to enjoy the journey, enjoy and live life every day, otherwise it’s not worth it.
How did you build an authentic community around Sunshinestories?
It’s always been important to us to engage with the local community, without that we would never have gotten where we are today. We believe not only in helping out, but in empowering the local community and giving opportunity for people to grow and live their dreams.
We love to take part in Almsgivings, one of the most common practices among Buddhists, where you serve food to the village. It’s an amazing thing. Read more here.
Last week when we invited the monks from our neighbouring temple to lead the opening ceremony of our new yoga shala, we call it the jungle shala! All the staff came together and the high priest from the village along with the local priest and their monks came. It was one of those magical moments were you feel super thankful for being part of the community here.
If you could look ahead in 5 years, what dreams would you have wanted to accomplish, create or bring to life?
At the moment, and for many years ahead, we see us living here in Sri Lanka. This is our home now. We moved before settling our own roots (like a house, full time job etc) in Sweden and in many ways the life we have here in Sri Lanka is the only one we know of. It’s the dream life that we have been looking for. We will continue to develop both Sunshinestories and Ceylon Sliders and are open for what the future will bring.
Follow their journey on Instagram Sunshinestories x Ceylon Sliders
