1 - 22 July 2026, SRI lanka
Nūl Peace Ride 2026
One island. One thread.
Many hearts weaving it back together.
Help Us Get There
Every contribution matters.
Every dollar is a step toward community reclaiming its future.
We are riding to raise $150,000 during the Peace Ride. Every dollar goes directly to Stage 1A Kayts, the first step in a $1 million community-led initiative rooted in education, economic opportunity and equity.
※ Building livelihoods
※ Preserving cultural memory
※ Rebuilding displaced communities together
22 days. 12 days of cycling. 10 days of community. 1,000kms. 7-riders.
One shared purpose.
This ride is not about cycling.
It is about knowledge buried, not lost. Skills displaced, not erased.
It is about walls that hold memory and land that carries names.
It is about a broken dwelling in Kayts becoming the home of Nūl, where community
and country can rebuild together.
It is about reconnecting what war scattered and reviving what displacement silenced.
It is about sitting together, tea in hand, a song in the air, listening long before acting.
It is about building together, not for communities, but with communities.
MEET OUR RIDERS
Our seven riders are not elite athletes.
They are people who believe in making a difference.
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Hi, I’m Izzy. I grew up in the regional town of Armidale, NSW, before moving to Newcastle in 2020 to study a Bachelor of Social Science and anthropology. After graduating in 2023, my partner and I spent two years in Canada on a working holiday visa. During that time, we completed two seasons of tree planting in the Canadian wilderness and worked on an elk rehabilitation program in Golden, British Columbia.
When I returned home, I started my postgrad in Social change and development and alongside this, was seeking opportunities that went into translating what I had been learning into lived experience.
The Peace Ride resonated deeply with me as a chance to be part of a truth telling process and to learn from communities firsthand.
I am always up for a physical challenge, so at the moment I’m training to ride 1000km in July across 22 days. Whilst this part will be challenging I am also motivated by the opportunity to listen, learn, and stand in solidarity with Sri Lankan communities in a way that envisions a future decided upon by and for Sri Lankan identities.
In solidarity, I am motivated to raise $5000 for the development of a community eco-hub that will contribute to local economic opportunities, social cohesion and sustainability. Any amount donated will help to make an impact. Thank you!
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What started as a personal challenge, cycling 1,000 km across Sri Lanka, has become something much deeper.
Since joining Nūl earlier this year, my understanding of Sri Lanka, its communities and the values behind this organisation has grown in ways I never expected. The 2026 Peace Ride isn't just a physical journey, it's a chance to experience Sri Lanka through a lens of genuine connection, visiting the very communities where we'll be bringing projects to life.
My goal is to raise $5000 prior and during the Peace Ride.
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I'm Nick. I'm from Newcastle and studied at UON, graduating in 2023 with a degree in development studies. Throughout my studies I became really interested in community and international development. I did an internship at an international development NGO, and went to Samoa as part of my studies which really solidified to me that this is the sort of work I'd like to do. I also really enjoy cycling and love a physical challenge so combining these passions to do something meaningful is really exciting to me.
As soon as I came across the opportunity to be a part of the Peace Ride, I put my name forward. The opportunity to connect with diverse cultural groups throughout Sri Lanka, whilst raising funds to contribute to the locally led project of building a hub to create economic opportunities for communities that have experienced so much hardship aligns strongly with my core ethics and values. I’m super excited to take part in the ride, and even more so to learn from people living in these communities – I believe this is key to effectively and sustainably contribute to projects in any community setting.
Not much else I have to include other than I'm super excited!
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I’m Sheree, a Melbourne-based community development practitioner, small business owner, and Bachelor of Community Development student. Through my work with Nūl, I’ve become passionate about community-led change, social connection, and learning through lived experience.
After taking part in the Peace Ride last year, I knew I wanted to return in 2026. What stayed with me most were the conversations, relationships, and the opportunity to experience Sri Lanka through the voices and stories of local communities.
What makes this journey so meaningful is the opportunity to travel slowly through communities, connect with people, learn through lived experience, and hear directly from community voices across the island.
The ride is also an incredible team experience built on shared purpose, resilience, and connection. Riding together through Sri Lanka’s landscapes and communities creates space for genuine relationships, reflection, and a deeper understanding of the people and places around us.
My goal is to raise AUD $5,000 to support Nūl’s community-led projects and long-term impact across Sri Lanka.
Every donation, share, and conversation helps support this journey and the communities at the heart of it.
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I hope to help build a better world. I try spending all my free time helping people who are underserved by our current social structures. I volunteer regularly, with a particular interest in connecting people and spaces through food. I love to get my hands dirty in the garden, especially if it means I am enabling others to share in the bounty of nature. I am always looking for new ways I can help and learn about the world. I love reading anything that challenges the dominant systems of our day and proposes something new and equitable in its place.
I am hoping this trip will allow me to directly see how community-based efforts can help fix the problems in our world. Last year I started studying community development, originally feeling community work may offer me opportunities to do good. I have since learned how integral community development work is across the globe, and see the ride as an opportunity to have a detailed look at community development work. I am also excited by the opportunity to explore and learn from unfamiliar cultures and social structures. I feel like this trip will help broaden my perspectives and ideas on paths to a new world.
I’m hoping to raise $5000.
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G'day, I'm Liam from Newcastle!
I completed a Bachelor of Development Studies and a Bachelor of Business at the University of Newcastle in 2021, before working as a Land Use Planner for a regional council on the NSW Mid North Coast for the following three years. Over the last year, I've been backpacking throughout Southeast and South Asia as part of a gap year/sabbatical, immersing myself in local cultures and seeking experiences that foster genuine human connection.
Having recently been on the hunt for volunteer opportunities here in Sri Lanka, as well as a challenge unlike anything I've taken on before, I recently came across the opportunity to join the Nūl Peace Ride—an experience I believe will be incredibly rewarding.
I'm passionate about adventure in all its forms, whether that's exploring new places, surfing, hiking, mountain biking, breathwork, yoga, or learning from people whose lives and perspectives differ from my own. I believe travel has the power to break down barriers, challenge assumptions, and remind us that, despite our perceived and often imagined differences, we share far more in common than we're frequently conditioned to believe.
The Nūl Peace Ride brings together many of the things I value most: adventure, meaningful human connection, and a spirit of creating positive change. During my time in Sri Lanka, and throughout the other countries I've travelled over the past year, I've experienced and been deeply inspired by the extraordinary selflessness, kindness, and hospitality of so many locals I've met and come to know along the way. This ride is an opportunity to give something back while supporting and learning from communities on the ground.
I'm always up for new challenges that push my mind and body beyond their limits and past the power of doubt, and I'm even more passionate about taking on one like this while supporting a cause that's bigger than myself and learning from and sharing with local communities along the way. I'm also heaps keen to experience a country in a way unlike anything I have experienced anywhere before! This ride will go well beyond many of my past adventures, and it's one ambitious mission, but one I'm absolutely stoked to give a solid crack, and I can't wait to see what comes of it.
I believe cycling offers a unique way to connect with people and places at a slower pace. It's not just about covering kilometres; it's about listening to stories, building understanding, and demonstrating that peace, sustainable community development, and ultimately positive change are enabled and strengthened through relationships and genuine human connection. That embodies the core vision of Nūl, which I resonate with strongly. I'm honoured to be riding alongside people from different backgrounds in support of reconciliation, community, and hope for future generations.
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I have ridden across Sri Lanka four times, beginning with an unassisted exploration ride with my friend Evan in 2014, then with my brother and friends in 2016, and most recently with the Nūl team in 2025. Each ride deepened a decade of listening, learning, and relationship-building across the island. That accumulated experience is what Nūl is built on.
This year, I arrive at Kayts, where my mother's family is from, and where that work begins to take physical form. I'm grateful to be doing this alongside a team who believes in it as much as I do.
On 1 July 2026, seven riders leave Colombo and begin moving through the length and breadth of Sri Lanka.
South to north. Coast to interior. Community to community.
The route passes through Mirissa, Kataragama, Batticaloa, Trincomalee, Mullaitivu, Mannar, Jaffna and Kayts. Riding begins at 5:15 each morning before the heat rises. The terrain is demanding. The history is heavier.
But the cycling is not the point. The cycling is the vessel.
Along the way the team sits with Tamil, Sinhala, Malayaga Tamil, Muslim, Christian, Vedda, Burgher and other communities. Visiting significant sites. Sharing meals. Playing traditional games. Listening to stories that do not make the news.
Each community engagement is rooted in one or more of five intentions:
BUILDING CONNECTION
Deepening relationships and understanding what communities actually need
BUILDING CAPACITY
Strengthening local leadership and practical skills.
REIMAGINING THE FUTURE
Co-designing pathways and possibilities together.
CONNECTING TO SUPPORT
Linking communities to organisations and resources that can help.
DEVELOPING A NŪL PARTNERSHIP PROJECT
Co-creating something tangible rooted in community priorities.
The Ride
Join us on this inspiring journey across Sri Lanka as we ride together for peace, healing and connection. You can be part of it in many ways: ride with us for a section, host an event, share a meal, visit along the way, or support us through donations, partnerships and fundraising.
We arrive with humility.
We build together with shared responsibility.
Have you attended a Peace Ride event or workshop?
If you've attended a Peace Ride workshop, we'd love to hear about your experience. Your feedback helps us improve future workshops, better support our community, and continue creating meaningful opportunities for connection and learning.
Complete our Workshop Feedback Form and help shape future Peace Ride community engagement activities.
The place that started everything
In Kayts, off the northern tip of Sri Lanka, there is a broken dwelling on four acres of land. Walls that once held a family, a community, a way of life.
It is where our founder's mother's family is from. Where his grandfather had deep rooted presence in a community later torn apart by war and displacement.
Broken and beautiful. Original walls preserved. A living monument to memory. A gathering place where people come to connect, heal, learn, create and provide.
This restoration is an invitation. To Sri Lankans. To the diaspora. To allies around the world who believe that what connects us is stronger than what divides us.
WHAT WE ARE BUILDING IN KAYTS
The Stage 1A goal for Kayts will
bring five things to life together.
The Restoration is the heart.
Original walls held within a new sustainable structure. A living artefact of memory. A community gathering space surrounded by a grove, garden and animals.
1.
Accommodation and local cuisine created by locally trained artisans using sustainable materials.
Hosting conscious travellers, researchers and diaspora visitors. Revenue from accommodation, cuisine, cultural tourism and the artisan initiative cross-subsidises all community programmes and operations.
2.
Regenerative Cultural Tourism rooted in the local community and its people.
Storytelling walks, water and island experiences, cultural immersion programmes.
3.
An Artisan Initiative giving local craftspeople space to create, earn and pass on knowledge.
Knives, weaving, timber furniture, cuisine and more. Sold locally, through diaspora networks and internationally.
4.
Community Programmes running throughout.
Oral history, leadership training, artisan apprenticeships, identity and memory work. These do not generate revenue. They are the whole point.
5.
By year three, the Kayts site will be fully financially self-sustaining.
The Peace Ride 2026 is how we raise the first $150,000 to begin.
A Legacy of Riding
This is not the first time we have cycled across Sri Lanka with purpose.
In 2014, founder desh Balasubramaniam and Evan Marginson took to the roads on the first unassisted exploration ride for Ondru. No support vehicle. No map for what they would find. Roads that carried the weight of memory, elephants on the path, and people whose resilience reshaped everything they thought they knew.
In 2016, the Aal Peace Ride led by Ondru brought a larger team. desh Balasubramaniam, Sandesh Balasubramaniam, Chris Saunders, Charlotte Reddington, Leoni Sutton and Justin Hamman rode through a country still finding its way back to itself. They raised significant funds for locally led projects.
In 2025, now operating as Nūl, the Peace Ride gathered its strongest team yet. desh Balasubramaniam, Sheree Duncan, Suhaas Kataria, Lashini Piyatunga, Serena Bridges, Celine Apollon and Kaori Ochoa crossed the island together, going further and deeper than any ride before.
Each ride has built on the last. 2026 is the most ambitious yet.
An invitation to the diaspora and to the world
Decades of conflict divided Sri Lanka's communities.
Displacement scattered them across the world.
The Nūl Peace Ride is an invitation to come back together.
In spirit. In action. In solidarity.
To Sri Lankans on the island and across the diaspora:
this is a moment to play a constructive role in rebuilding what shaped you.
To allies of all backgrounds: you are welcome here. The thread that connects us is stronger than the forces that divide us.
Nūl means thread. In Tamil. In Sinhala. The same word in both languages. The same intention across every community, every kilometre, every conversation.
Become a sponsor
Your sponsorship does more than fund a ride.
It funds a future.
Become a Partner
There are many ways to be part of this beyond financial support.
You might offer expertise, resources, networks, research, design, construction or simply your presence in the world as an advocate for this work.
BECOME A SUPPORTER
Choose to give individually. Donate now.