On the morning of the 23rd I flew from Bhamo to Myitkyina. I took a motorcycle taxi to the airport about 7 in the chilly early morning air. My backpack was barely checked (just an outside compartment). The plane, with two propellers and seats for about 50 passengers, arrived from Mandalay shortly before 9 and we took off for Myitkyina about 9. I had great views on the 20 minute ride north. I could see the Irrawaddy to the west, first only in portions among hills and then the whole river once the terrain flattened. I didn't see any boats on the river.
Once in town, a relatively big city of 40,000, I walked to the train station to check out trains south and then walked to the riverfront and had lunch at a riverside restaurant. There was hardly any boat activity on the river. I could see a bridge several miles upriver. I spent some time in the restaurant after finishing lunch just to enjoy the river and then walked north, parallel with the river, to the Kachin State Museum, which was fairly interesting, especially the mannequins with typical clothing of the various ethnic groups. Further north I came to a temple with two giant Buddhas, one standing and one reclining, built by a former Japanese soldier who was here during World War II and dedicated to 3400 of his colleagues who lost their lives. As I remember, Myitkyina was recaptured by Americans and Chinese under General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell towards the end of 1944. The Ledo Road led to Myitkyina from Ledo in northeast India and connected with the Burma Road, enabling supplies to be sent by road to Chongqing, the nationalist Chinese capital during the war. In my hotel lobby there was a photo of trucks zigzagging up the road towards China.
I talked with a Shan girl at the temple and then headed back to town, where a big market had taken over a street near the river. Motorcycles, however, made it a little perilous to wander through the market. I ate dinner at the riverside restaurant. Foreigners can travel north by road only about 30 miles from Myitkyina, to a spot where two rivers converge to form the Irrawaddy, but it is not a particularly scenic spot. You can fly further north, to Putao.
I was headed back south, though, and the next morning I walked to the train station before 6 to buy a ticket to Hopin. It took me only about 10 minutes and cost only 1750 kyat ($1.75) for an upper class seat. The train left at 7:45, so I had time to walk to the riverfront, where small boats were bringing produce to the morning market. I watched men carry big bunches of bananas and other stuff up the high embankment. The sun rose over hills to the east a little after 6:30. I ate breakfast at my hotel at 7 and made it to the train before it left right on time at 7:45.
I enjoyed the rocking ride as we headed southwest through a beautiful flat valley filled with harvested rice fields and with forested hills on either side. In one area there was a big fog bank to the east, perhaps along a river.
The train took about four hours to reach Hopin, where I was led to a pick-up filled with cargo and with benches high up above the cargo. These are the vehicles that take people to Indawgyi Lake across the hills to the west. I boarded and we left about an hour later, with more cargo jammed in and about seven other passengers, an old man who sat on the roof of the pick-up, and about six women, most of them young, and all wearing conical straw hats. I sat behind them in a row cleared a bit to provide room, though not much room, for my longer legs. On the dusty road we fairly quickly reached the forested hills and ascended them, rising about 800 feet to the top of the pass, where there was a good view of the lake and its valley.
We came down to the valley floor and headed to the lake and I looked forward to an early arrival at the lake, but the pick-up made several stops in towns before the lake, taking a lot of time to unload and then load cargo. We spent about half the time of the trip, maybe two hours, stopped while cargo was unloaded and loaded. The road to the lake was very dusty, with road work going on at several places. We must have crossed through the water of four or five streams where bridges were being built. And the big trucks on the road churned up lots of dust. The people on the way were friendly, with lots of people waving.
The pick-up finally arrived at the lakeside guest house after 5, where I was surprised to find four other tourists at this remote location. The lake is beautiful, and the guest house had a porch facing the lake. The rooms are simple and fairly bare, with hard wood beds covered with thin mattresses. The toilet and shower are in a separate little building, with water pumped from the lake to two plastic cisterns on the roof.
I took a cold bucket bath in the shower room and then had dinner with the four others in a nearby restaurant, next to a small lakeside army post. They told me that the night before, as they were finishing dinner at the restaurant, there had been a Kachin guerrilla alert, and that the restaurant had quickly closed. The guest house owner had led them, running, not back to the guest house but to his lakeside house further down the lake, where they slept on the floor. They said they hadn't heard any gunshots. The sky that night over the lake was filled with stars, with Orion just rising over the eastern horizon. The generator was turned off about 8 and we just watched the stars. We all went to bed before 9.
The next morning I was up soon after 6. To my surprise the sky was cloudy, with fog over the lake. It was chilly, too, my thermometer registering 66 degrees in my room. It was colder outside. I sat on the balcony and watched the morning fishermen in their small boats on the lake in the fog. Lots of birds could be seen, egrets, herons, cormorants, kingfishers, and others.
The others all left for Hopin at about 7:30. Soon after 8 the guest house owner, who spoke almost no English, motioned me to follow him. We headed to the village, Lonton, just down the road from the guest house and he led me past wooden houses and a big school to a house where a wedding celebration was taking place. I had heard the loud music begin early that morning. As we arrived the music was a Burmese version of "The Ballad of John and Yoko," with Burmese words. The people at the wedding were Burmese, he told me, as was he, but he said there are also Shan and Kachin people in Lonton and throughout the lake area.
We sat at one of several tables under a tent with several others and were served a delicious meal, maybe the best I've ever had in Burma. The chicken and rice dish was particularly good, with tender, shredded chicken. There was also soup, salad, some crunchy fish pieces, another, spicier chicken dish, and lots of vegetable dishes. Tea and an orange drink were also served. People were very friendly and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The bride and groom and their two attendants mingled with the crowd and occasionally sat in a row of chairs at the end of the tent. The groom wore a white tunic while the bride wore a beautiful blue traditional top and longyi. Her hair was full of jewels. Her attendant was dressed similarly, but in bright yellow. They happily posed for photos for me, as did many others, including a woman who seemed to be the mother of either the bride or the groom. At least, she seemed to be the hostess of the party. We left after probably less than an hour there, each of us given a plate as a souvenir of the wedding. I noticed a car decorated with balloons down a dusty lane near the house.
We walked back to the guest house and then I continued further north, passing the army post built on a low hill next to the lake. It is surrounded with a bamboo palisade, with additional sharpened bamboo staves sticking out all along the palisade to ward off attackers. It looked like something from the Middles Ages, or earlier, except for the cement pillboxes built into the hillside. I walked along the road north for a further 20 or 30 minutes, past harvested rice fields, but the dust thrown up by trucks was unpleasant, so I turned back. This road leads to jade mines near the town of Hpakant, so I suppose improving the road is a priority. Lots of motorcycles overburdened with cargo came by, and almost everybody waved.
When I got back to the guest house the owner took me for a walk through the village, showing me his house and indicating which areas were Burmese and which were Shan or Kachin. All the houses were of wood and some had thatched roofs. Pigs and chickens rooted around and fish were on sale. He led me to the house of a 17 year old girl who is about to begin a seven year medical school course of study next month in Mandalay. She spoke pretty good English. She served us tea along with fried shrimp and freshly cooked long skinny fish, all of which were delicious. She told me her mother is a teacher at the school in Lonton while her father is the head of the village to the south, and that one of her parents is Burmese and the other Shan.
The sun finally came out about 11 as we headed back to the guest house. I sat out on the porch by the lake until about 3:30 enjoying the wonderful views. About five miles up the lake I could see the big monastery on an island covered with a big golden pagoda. At night, all lit up, it is the brightest thing on the lake. White clouds floated over the hills to the east and were reflected in the lake water. Boats and birds came by, and people washed clothes and bathed in the lake water.
About 2:30 four tourists showed up, including one I had met in Myitkyina. They had all spent the night in Hopin and were very glad to get to the lake. I talked with them for a while and then set off on a walk through the village again before dark. The people were great and I enjoyed seeing the rustic houses, some with hand operated water pumps and some with water buffalo in their yards. One guy on a motorcycle stopped near me, paused and drew a deep breath, and then said "good evening" before starting up his motorcycle.
I got back to the guest house about 5 and sat on the porch until about 7, when I went to dinner with two more tourists who arrived after 5. (The others had eaten soon after they arrived.) We all went to bed before 9.
The next morning I was again up soon after 6 and the lake was again filled with fog. About 8 the owner took me and four others who were awake to a little restaurant where we had a good breakfast of tea with condensed milk, a dark sticky rice mixture with shredded coconut and chickpeas, and several greasy, but tasty, baked goods. Back at the guest house I sat on the porch as the four others left on kayaks that you could rent. The sun came out about 11 again and about 12 I had lunch with two others. The three of us rented a motorboat and about 2:30 were taken to the island with the monastery, about a half hour trip. The lake was beautiful, with lots of birds scattering at our approach. In the water near the monastery were many gulls, waiting for handouts from pilgrims.
We spent about an hour at the monastery, with lots of gold on its stupa. Only a few monks were there, and only a few pilgrims came by boat from the shore close by. The water around the island wasn't deep. It looked about three feet deep and I was told that at the end of the dry season you can walk to the island. The lake is said to be Burma's largest, and the island is a little less than half way to the lake's northern tip. Our guesthouse was not far from the southern tip.
I enjoyed the late afternoon boat ride back, and then took another walk into the village. I walked to the monastery in the village and talked to a 26 year old woman now living in Yangon (Rangoon), the former capital, who had returned to Lonton because her 23 year old nephew was entering the monastery, though only for a month. His head was newly shaved.
The sky that night was again full of stars. We noticed that the army post rang what sounded like a sort of drum or wooden clapper every fifteen minutes or so, and we could hear the sound repeated further north.
That night felt considerably colder, and my thermometer read 64 degrees the next morning. The lake, however, was less foggy than previous mornings, with patches of blue sky soon visible. The guest house owner took us to the monastery for breakfast, a celebratory breakfast provided by the family of the young man becoming a monk. As always, the people were very friendly. The others left after the breakfast, as the sun came out early that day at about 9, but I hung around the monastery and watched a small procession of drummers with two monks being shielded with parasols held over their heads by other men. I looked around the interior of the big wooden monastery building. Several old women were sitting outside. The monastery porch had a big wooden slit drum hanging from the roof.
From the monastery I walked to what was apparently a nursery school right across from the big school. The very little children all gathered at the entrance and waved and posed for photographs. They were very friendly. When I left they all waved and said "bye-bye" and I felt a little like Dorothy leaving the Munchkins.
I took a dirt road from the main road heading west, away from the lake, following two women with baskets and accompanied by cows. Soon they turned into their homes but I walked on as the road became a path through some trees and then past rice fields. Men were harvesting the rice in one field. A family passed me and I followed them as they climbed a sort of ladder over a fence and walked along the narrow dikes of harvested rice paddies. They soon outdistanced me and I came across some cows apparently stunned by my appearance. I saw the family reach their house on the far side of the rice fields, under some trees, and then I turned back and climbed another set of steps over a fence and onto a plank walkway that traveled over churned up, and no doubt often wet ground, for a hundred feet or more. The planks were less than a foot wide, but sturdy. The path was dry beyond and I continued west past more rice fields and a few simple houses that seemed abandoned. I eventually reached boggy ground with water buffalo and egrets, only maybe a half mile from the wooded hills to the west. I tried unsuccessfully to find dry ground to reach the hills, and then turned back.
On the way back I took some side paths and on one came across about five young women and two boys reaping rice with hand sickles. I watched them and, as they were very friendly, climbed the fence to get closer to them to take some more photos. One spoke good English and told me to wait while she climbed up the ladder to the open walled house on stilts nearby. She came down with a Huawei (Chinese) smartphone to take a photo of me, first in the sunshine and later under the shade of a tree. I stood and smiled but she indicated I should pose like the local people do, flashing double peace signs, so I did so.
It was about noon by now and they all took a lunch break from their reaping. They all climbed up into the house and invited me in. Inside was also a young mother with two young children, the oldest maybe three and very shy. The infant seemed quite curious. The English speaker told me they were all Kachin and all from the same family. They offered me lunch, but they didn't have much, so I declined and walked back to the guest house, getting there after 1. I did have a big lunch at the nearby restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon on the guest house porch gazing at the lake and talking with the others. Three more tourists arrived before nightfall, so the small guest house was full.
Once in town, a relatively big city of 40,000, I walked to the train station to check out trains south and then walked to the riverfront and had lunch at a riverside restaurant. There was hardly any boat activity on the river. I could see a bridge several miles upriver. I spent some time in the restaurant after finishing lunch just to enjoy the river and then walked north, parallel with the river, to the Kachin State Museum, which was fairly interesting, especially the mannequins with typical clothing of the various ethnic groups. Further north I came to a temple with two giant Buddhas, one standing and one reclining, built by a former Japanese soldier who was here during World War II and dedicated to 3400 of his colleagues who lost their lives. As I remember, Myitkyina was recaptured by Americans and Chinese under General "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell towards the end of 1944. The Ledo Road led to Myitkyina from Ledo in northeast India and connected with the Burma Road, enabling supplies to be sent by road to Chongqing, the nationalist Chinese capital during the war. In my hotel lobby there was a photo of trucks zigzagging up the road towards China.
I talked with a Shan girl at the temple and then headed back to town, where a big market had taken over a street near the river. Motorcycles, however, made it a little perilous to wander through the market. I ate dinner at the riverside restaurant. Foreigners can travel north by road only about 30 miles from Myitkyina, to a spot where two rivers converge to form the Irrawaddy, but it is not a particularly scenic spot. You can fly further north, to Putao.
I was headed back south, though, and the next morning I walked to the train station before 6 to buy a ticket to Hopin. It took me only about 10 minutes and cost only 1750 kyat ($1.75) for an upper class seat. The train left at 7:45, so I had time to walk to the riverfront, where small boats were bringing produce to the morning market. I watched men carry big bunches of bananas and other stuff up the high embankment. The sun rose over hills to the east a little after 6:30. I ate breakfast at my hotel at 7 and made it to the train before it left right on time at 7:45.
I enjoyed the rocking ride as we headed southwest through a beautiful flat valley filled with harvested rice fields and with forested hills on either side. In one area there was a big fog bank to the east, perhaps along a river.
The train took about four hours to reach Hopin, where I was led to a pick-up filled with cargo and with benches high up above the cargo. These are the vehicles that take people to Indawgyi Lake across the hills to the west. I boarded and we left about an hour later, with more cargo jammed in and about seven other passengers, an old man who sat on the roof of the pick-up, and about six women, most of them young, and all wearing conical straw hats. I sat behind them in a row cleared a bit to provide room, though not much room, for my longer legs. On the dusty road we fairly quickly reached the forested hills and ascended them, rising about 800 feet to the top of the pass, where there was a good view of the lake and its valley.
We came down to the valley floor and headed to the lake and I looked forward to an early arrival at the lake, but the pick-up made several stops in towns before the lake, taking a lot of time to unload and then load cargo. We spent about half the time of the trip, maybe two hours, stopped while cargo was unloaded and loaded. The road to the lake was very dusty, with road work going on at several places. We must have crossed through the water of four or five streams where bridges were being built. And the big trucks on the road churned up lots of dust. The people on the way were friendly, with lots of people waving.
The pick-up finally arrived at the lakeside guest house after 5, where I was surprised to find four other tourists at this remote location. The lake is beautiful, and the guest house had a porch facing the lake. The rooms are simple and fairly bare, with hard wood beds covered with thin mattresses. The toilet and shower are in a separate little building, with water pumped from the lake to two plastic cisterns on the roof.
I took a cold bucket bath in the shower room and then had dinner with the four others in a nearby restaurant, next to a small lakeside army post. They told me that the night before, as they were finishing dinner at the restaurant, there had been a Kachin guerrilla alert, and that the restaurant had quickly closed. The guest house owner had led them, running, not back to the guest house but to his lakeside house further down the lake, where they slept on the floor. They said they hadn't heard any gunshots. The sky that night over the lake was filled with stars, with Orion just rising over the eastern horizon. The generator was turned off about 8 and we just watched the stars. We all went to bed before 9.
The next morning I was up soon after 6. To my surprise the sky was cloudy, with fog over the lake. It was chilly, too, my thermometer registering 66 degrees in my room. It was colder outside. I sat on the balcony and watched the morning fishermen in their small boats on the lake in the fog. Lots of birds could be seen, egrets, herons, cormorants, kingfishers, and others.
The others all left for Hopin at about 7:30. Soon after 8 the guest house owner, who spoke almost no English, motioned me to follow him. We headed to the village, Lonton, just down the road from the guest house and he led me past wooden houses and a big school to a house where a wedding celebration was taking place. I had heard the loud music begin early that morning. As we arrived the music was a Burmese version of "The Ballad of John and Yoko," with Burmese words. The people at the wedding were Burmese, he told me, as was he, but he said there are also Shan and Kachin people in Lonton and throughout the lake area.
We sat at one of several tables under a tent with several others and were served a delicious meal, maybe the best I've ever had in Burma. The chicken and rice dish was particularly good, with tender, shredded chicken. There was also soup, salad, some crunchy fish pieces, another, spicier chicken dish, and lots of vegetable dishes. Tea and an orange drink were also served. People were very friendly and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The bride and groom and their two attendants mingled with the crowd and occasionally sat in a row of chairs at the end of the tent. The groom wore a white tunic while the bride wore a beautiful blue traditional top and longyi. Her hair was full of jewels. Her attendant was dressed similarly, but in bright yellow. They happily posed for photos for me, as did many others, including a woman who seemed to be the mother of either the bride or the groom. At least, she seemed to be the hostess of the party. We left after probably less than an hour there, each of us given a plate as a souvenir of the wedding. I noticed a car decorated with balloons down a dusty lane near the house.
We walked back to the guest house and then I continued further north, passing the army post built on a low hill next to the lake. It is surrounded with a bamboo palisade, with additional sharpened bamboo staves sticking out all along the palisade to ward off attackers. It looked like something from the Middles Ages, or earlier, except for the cement pillboxes built into the hillside. I walked along the road north for a further 20 or 30 minutes, past harvested rice fields, but the dust thrown up by trucks was unpleasant, so I turned back. This road leads to jade mines near the town of Hpakant, so I suppose improving the road is a priority. Lots of motorcycles overburdened with cargo came by, and almost everybody waved.
When I got back to the guest house the owner took me for a walk through the village, showing me his house and indicating which areas were Burmese and which were Shan or Kachin. All the houses were of wood and some had thatched roofs. Pigs and chickens rooted around and fish were on sale. He led me to the house of a 17 year old girl who is about to begin a seven year medical school course of study next month in Mandalay. She spoke pretty good English. She served us tea along with fried shrimp and freshly cooked long skinny fish, all of which were delicious. She told me her mother is a teacher at the school in Lonton while her father is the head of the village to the south, and that one of her parents is Burmese and the other Shan.
The sun finally came out about 11 as we headed back to the guest house. I sat out on the porch by the lake until about 3:30 enjoying the wonderful views. About five miles up the lake I could see the big monastery on an island covered with a big golden pagoda. At night, all lit up, it is the brightest thing on the lake. White clouds floated over the hills to the east and were reflected in the lake water. Boats and birds came by, and people washed clothes and bathed in the lake water.
About 2:30 four tourists showed up, including one I had met in Myitkyina. They had all spent the night in Hopin and were very glad to get to the lake. I talked with them for a while and then set off on a walk through the village again before dark. The people were great and I enjoyed seeing the rustic houses, some with hand operated water pumps and some with water buffalo in their yards. One guy on a motorcycle stopped near me, paused and drew a deep breath, and then said "good evening" before starting up his motorcycle.
I got back to the guest house about 5 and sat on the porch until about 7, when I went to dinner with two more tourists who arrived after 5. (The others had eaten soon after they arrived.) We all went to bed before 9.
The next morning I was again up soon after 6 and the lake was again filled with fog. About 8 the owner took me and four others who were awake to a little restaurant where we had a good breakfast of tea with condensed milk, a dark sticky rice mixture with shredded coconut and chickpeas, and several greasy, but tasty, baked goods. Back at the guest house I sat on the porch as the four others left on kayaks that you could rent. The sun came out about 11 again and about 12 I had lunch with two others. The three of us rented a motorboat and about 2:30 were taken to the island with the monastery, about a half hour trip. The lake was beautiful, with lots of birds scattering at our approach. In the water near the monastery were many gulls, waiting for handouts from pilgrims.
We spent about an hour at the monastery, with lots of gold on its stupa. Only a few monks were there, and only a few pilgrims came by boat from the shore close by. The water around the island wasn't deep. It looked about three feet deep and I was told that at the end of the dry season you can walk to the island. The lake is said to be Burma's largest, and the island is a little less than half way to the lake's northern tip. Our guesthouse was not far from the southern tip.
I enjoyed the late afternoon boat ride back, and then took another walk into the village. I walked to the monastery in the village and talked to a 26 year old woman now living in Yangon (Rangoon), the former capital, who had returned to Lonton because her 23 year old nephew was entering the monastery, though only for a month. His head was newly shaved.
The sky that night was again full of stars. We noticed that the army post rang what sounded like a sort of drum or wooden clapper every fifteen minutes or so, and we could hear the sound repeated further north.
That night felt considerably colder, and my thermometer read 64 degrees the next morning. The lake, however, was less foggy than previous mornings, with patches of blue sky soon visible. The guest house owner took us to the monastery for breakfast, a celebratory breakfast provided by the family of the young man becoming a monk. As always, the people were very friendly. The others left after the breakfast, as the sun came out early that day at about 9, but I hung around the monastery and watched a small procession of drummers with two monks being shielded with parasols held over their heads by other men. I looked around the interior of the big wooden monastery building. Several old women were sitting outside. The monastery porch had a big wooden slit drum hanging from the roof.
From the monastery I walked to what was apparently a nursery school right across from the big school. The very little children all gathered at the entrance and waved and posed for photographs. They were very friendly. When I left they all waved and said "bye-bye" and I felt a little like Dorothy leaving the Munchkins.
I took a dirt road from the main road heading west, away from the lake, following two women with baskets and accompanied by cows. Soon they turned into their homes but I walked on as the road became a path through some trees and then past rice fields. Men were harvesting the rice in one field. A family passed me and I followed them as they climbed a sort of ladder over a fence and walked along the narrow dikes of harvested rice paddies. They soon outdistanced me and I came across some cows apparently stunned by my appearance. I saw the family reach their house on the far side of the rice fields, under some trees, and then I turned back and climbed another set of steps over a fence and onto a plank walkway that traveled over churned up, and no doubt often wet ground, for a hundred feet or more. The planks were less than a foot wide, but sturdy. The path was dry beyond and I continued west past more rice fields and a few simple houses that seemed abandoned. I eventually reached boggy ground with water buffalo and egrets, only maybe a half mile from the wooded hills to the west. I tried unsuccessfully to find dry ground to reach the hills, and then turned back.
On the way back I took some side paths and on one came across about five young women and two boys reaping rice with hand sickles. I watched them and, as they were very friendly, climbed the fence to get closer to them to take some more photos. One spoke good English and told me to wait while she climbed up the ladder to the open walled house on stilts nearby. She came down with a Huawei (Chinese) smartphone to take a photo of me, first in the sunshine and later under the shade of a tree. I stood and smiled but she indicated I should pose like the local people do, flashing double peace signs, so I did so.
It was about noon by now and they all took a lunch break from their reaping. They all climbed up into the house and invited me in. Inside was also a young mother with two young children, the oldest maybe three and very shy. The infant seemed quite curious. The English speaker told me they were all Kachin and all from the same family. They offered me lunch, but they didn't have much, so I declined and walked back to the guest house, getting there after 1. I did have a big lunch at the nearby restaurant and spent the rest of the afternoon on the guest house porch gazing at the lake and talking with the others. Three more tourists arrived before nightfall, so the small guest house was full.
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