This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Rebekah Kellow, 57, who runs Wanderlust Surf Camp in Sri Lanka, where weeklong packages, including accommodation and surf lessons, start from $575. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I’d been a teacher for decades, so September always meant going back to school.
But in 2022, while my colleagues returned to their classrooms, I was out on a surfboard in Sri Lanka, thinking to myself: Maybe I don’t have to go back.
I was a few months into my yearlong sabbatical when I realized I’d outgrown my old life.
I moved to Guernsey, a small British island off the coast of France, over 20 years ago, as a single mother with my then 5-year-old son. I took a teaching job at a local school and eventually worked my way up to a senior leadership role.
As the years passed, the workload caught up to me. Stress made me very sick, and I took six weeks off before gradually returning to work. Approaching 50 also made me reassess my life.
I remember sitting with my line manager during a goal-setting review. For my personal goal, I said I wanted to take a sabbatical. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to write that, but I refused to change it.
Over the next few years, I downsized my house, bought a rental property, and waited until my son finished university before finally taking the sabbatical.
The year that changed everything
I always knew that the central part of my sabbatical would be training as a surf instructor. I’d surfed on and off in the past and taken lessons, although I never made much progress.
I’d spoken to people at my local surf school for years, and they recommended a course in Sri Lanka. Once I had the dates for that, I planned everything else around it.
I volunteered in Tanzania on a teaching project for three weeks, then spent about a month traveling in Indonesia before heading to Sri Lanka for the ten-week course.
When I arrived, everyone else was in their 20s, and I was 54, so it was a challenge. I had quit drinking the year before and upped my swim training, but the surfing itself was incredibly difficult.
However, I kept going. I was out there for an hour and a half, twice a day, sometimes in the most terrifying waves. By about week three, I started to feel strong.
I was also doing an hour of yoga every day, eating healthy, and getting to bed early. It was physically hard, but I felt so included and supported by the instructors and my fellow students. I never felt like an outsider.
After the course, my plan had been to continue volunteering and traveling around the world.
But I ended up canceling because I fell in love with Sri Lanka — and most importantly, the people.
I looked at my pension and Sri Lanka’s cost of living and realized I could make it work if I was careful. So, I went back to Guernsey and retired early.
I worked a season at a surf school in Guernsey and even returned to Indonesia for a month to make sure I wasn’t just in love with the idea of living somewhere tropical. Sri Lanka still felt right.
Betting on myself
In 2024, I went back to Sri Lanka and established my first business, a spa and yoga studio, with a yoga and meditation instructor I had met there.
It allowed me to obtain a resident visa, learn the ins and outs of running a business in Sri Lanka, and paved the way for what I really wanted to do: start a surf camp.
To help fund the project, I also returned to the role I retired from in Guernsey on a seven-month contract.
About a year later, my dream became a reality when I opened Wanderlust Surf Camp with a local surf instructor in Arugam Bay, a popular beach town on Sri Lanka’s eastern coast.
I don’t teach surfing here in Sri Lanka, but I’m very involved in the day-to-day running of the business, handling bookings, answering inquiries, and managing guest relations.
We offer weeklong packages with accommodation, breakfast, and two surf sessions a day. The camp, which can accommodate up to 16 guests, has three private rooms and a luxury dorm.
My days start early. We head out for a sunrise surf, then come back to the camp for breakfast. It gets very hot after that, so there’s some time to rest before we go out into the water to catch the sunset.
It’s a completely different life from the one I had before.
I have redefined who I am: I am no longer a teacher, approaching the end of my career, burnt out and weary. I am a surfer and a businesswoman.
If I hadn’t taken that sabbatical, I would probably be less fit, less healthy, and less happy.
These days, I feel completely free to do whatever I like whenever I like. Without all of this, I think I would have just been crawling my way to retirement as a jaded person.
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