Hello once again from Myanmar. The past 3 days we have been on a trek through some amazing scenery. We began our adventure in Kalaw, a nighttime bus ride away from Yangon. We set off energetically in the morning: Travis and Sarah, whom you know well, Ega (Polish) and Mattio (Brazil), Connor (Irish) and Zoe (British), and our guide Jimmy, a Burmese man. We talk and walk jauntily through the rolling hills. The scenery soon becomes bucolic. It is nice and cool for once and only rains a little. We pass men and women caring for their vegetable patches that cover the landscape like a green quilt. In the distance we can see patches of virgin rainforest on the mountains. Sometimes we would walk by small gold zedis or we would see them in the distance.
We visited hilltribe villages and a school. When the children playing outside the school saw us they ran up and proceeded to shake our hands one by one. They laughed hysterically when we would take photos of them and then show them. Surprisingly, the most aggressive and bullyish children were the novice monks.
As we walked through the village people would invite us in for tea so sometimes we would get to take a rest. The first night we spent in a village. The accomodation was very basic, a bunch of beds in a row on the floor. No electricity in the whole village! Can you believe it? The food cooked by the family was so good, so many kinds of Burmese curries, like cauliflower, potato, and peanut. After dinner we all talked and joked around over a fine 2$ bottle of whisky.
Bright and early the morning we began again. We walked through even more beautiful scenery, and sometimes saw buffaloes grazing or helping farmers plow the fields. We asked Jimmy if the people used chemicals on the farms. He said "No, only traditional herbs." Only a minute later however, we walked by a man spraying the plants with something that smelled very suspiciously like chemical pesticides. Oh well.
We stopped at a train station for a rest. Soon a train pulled up and a flurry of action began. People carrying huge bundles of veggies and fruits sold them to passengers on the train through the windows. Monks, children, dogs, and hilltribe people in colorful headscarves were all in on the action. The sky sprinkled refreshingly on us as we walked to our sleeping spot for the night.
We stayed that night in a monastery. The beds were a bit softer here, and there was electricity from 6-9 pm thanks to a generator, but the outhouse was up a steep hill. At night this brought out my often dormant fear of tigers. For dinner we had some amazing vegetable curries prepared by "Cooking Man".
The next day we hiked down a steep rocky trail through some lush rainforest, past jade rice paddies and ended up at Inle Lake. There we boarded a boat that took us to the Jumping Cat Monastery. A sign that said: "Please if you want to see cat jumping donation for cat food" prompted us to drop 200 kyat each into the box. A woman came out shaking a box of cat treats and soon she had 6 or 7 cats congregated around. She took a little hoop out and proceeded to make each one jump through it. It was so amazing!
More photos of trekking through beautiful mountains to Inle Lake:
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Originally written June 13, 2011.
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