Sabbatical turned burnout into Sri Lanka surf business

Wanderlust Surf – After decades of teaching left her burned out as she neared 50, Rebekah Kellow took a yearlong sabbatical that included training as a surf instructor in Sri Lanka. She retired early, returned in 2024 to build a local spa and yoga studio, and later opened Wande

When September came, Rebekah Kellow always felt the pull of the classroom.

For decades, she’d been a teacher, and every year meant returning to school. But in 2022—while her colleagues went back to their classrooms—she was in Sri Lanka, out on a surfboard, telling herself, in the quiet way people do when they’re trying not to panic: maybe she didn’t have to go back.

Kellow, 57, now runs Wanderlust Surf Camp in Sri Lanka. The business offers weeklong packages that include accommodation and surf lessons, with prices starting from $575. Her path there began with burnout. a refusal to be constrained. and a leap into a life she didn’t fully know how to describe until it was happening.

Kellow moved to Guernsey. a small British island off the coast of France. more than 20 years ago as a single mother with her then 5-year-old son. She took a teaching job at a local school and eventually worked her way up to a senior leadership role. Over time, the workload caught up with her. Stress made her very sick, and she took six weeks off before gradually returning to work. Approaching 50, she began reassessing her life.

In a goal-setting review with her line manager. she said that for her personal goal she wanted to take a sabbatical. She was told she wasn’t allowed to write that, but she refused to change it. Over the next few years. she downsized her house. bought a rental property. and waited until her son finished university before finally taking the sabbatical.

The yearlong break didn’t just offer distance from work. It was planned around a specific goal: training as a surf instructor. Kellow had surfed on and off and taken lessons, but never made much progress. For years, she’d spoken with people at her local surf school, and they recommended a course in Sri Lanka. Once she had the dates, she planned the rest of her sabbatical around it.

Volunteering and travel came first. She volunteered in Tanzania on a teaching project for three weeks. then spent about a month traveling around Indonesia before heading to Sri Lanka for the ten-week course. When she arrived, most of the other students were in their 20s. At 54, she was the oldest on the course, and the challenge was immediate.

She had quit drinking the year before and increased her swim training, but she still found the surfing incredibly difficult. She pushed through it anyway—out in the water for an hour and a half. twice a day. sometimes in what she described as the most terrifying waves. By about week three, she started to feel strong. Daily yoga—one hour—helped, along with eating healthy and getting to bed early. Kellow said she felt included and supported by the instructors and fellow students, and she never felt like an outsider.

After the course, she had planned to continue volunteering and traveling around the world. But she ended up canceling that plan after falling in love with Sri Lanka, and more importantly, with the people. She looked at her pension and Sri Lanka’s cost of living and realized she could make it work if she was careful. She returned to Guernsey and retired early.

She didn’t treat it as a goodbye to work. She worked a season at a surf school in Guernsey, and she also returned to Indonesia for a month to make sure she wasn’t just in love with the idea of living somewhere tropical. Even then, Sri Lanka still felt right.

Kellow’s shift from visitor to operator happened in stages. In 2024. she went back to Sri Lanka and established her first business—a spa and yoga studio—with a yoga and meditation instructor she had met there. She said the studio helped her obtain a resident visa. learn the ins and outs of running a business in Sri Lanka. and paved the way for what she really wanted to do: start a surf camp. To help fund the project, she also returned to her retired role in Guernsey on a seven-month contract.

About a year later, her surf-camp plan became real. She opened Wanderlust Surf Camp in Arugam Bay. a popular beach town on Sri Lanka’s eastern coast. with a local surf instructor. Kellow said she doesn’t teach surfing in Sri Lanka. but she is heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the business—handling bookings. answering inquiries. and managing guest relations.

The camp offers weeklong packages with accommodation, breakfast, and two surf sessions a day. It can accommodate up to 16 guests, with three private rooms and a luxury dorm. Her days start early. They head out for a sunrise surf, then return to the camp for breakfast. After it gets very hot. there’s time to rest before they go back into the water to catch the sunset.

Her old routine has been replaced by something that feels built for her. “It’s a completely different life from the one I had before. ” she said. describing how she’s redefined who she is. She’s no longer a teacher nearing the end of her career, burned out and weary. Now she calls herself “a surfer and a businesswoman.”.

She frames the sabbatical not as escape, but as a turning point. If she hadn’t taken it, she said she would likely have been less fit, less healthy, and less happy. Without it, she believes she would have spent her time crawling toward retirement as a jaded person.

A job change can happen on paper. Kellow’s change happened on the water, then in a different kind of decision-making—retiring early, building a business in 2024, and opening her camp in Arugam Bay by putting her time, money, and energy into a new life she could run herself.

Rebekah Kellow Wanderlust Surf Camp Sri Lanka surf camp Arugam Bay sabbatical burnout Guernsey spa and yoga studio resident visa surf instructor