Rough tracks

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It has to be said that many of the roads we are cycling on in this area are not the best. There are a few roads with a decent tarmac surface, but they are few and far between.  Of the rest, some are rough tracks of dry mud (thankfully we are travelling in the dry season).  Others are crumbing, potholed roads.  While still others are tracks covered in loose gravel.  Around Bagan the mud tracks change to sand – which is ok for bullock carts, but not much else!  

My right hand, affected by carpal tunnel syndrome, is suffering badly as we bump our way along.  On the plus – and the minus – side, there is an awful lot of road building going on.  This means that the roads will be better for those coming next year, but if anything, it’s even bumpier for us through the roadworks.  

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Road building in Burma is labour intensive – possibly a necessary job creation scheme, but it seems hard labour for those involved, a few men but mainly women paid just US$4 dollars a day.  The women sort the stones by size and place them by hand to form the basis of the road surface before tarmac is overlaid to bond them.  The men wield pick axes and work the tarmac machines.  I’m not sure if both sexes are paid equally, but I doubt it.  In some temples, women are not allowed onto the platform containing the Buddha – though we are told this is not sexist!  There is much we can’t understand in such a short period of travel….

Elephants and teak

 

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The remote forests of Burma are home to many different species – tigers, bears and elephants.   We are not in the right area to see elephants in the wild but before we start our third day of cycling we visit the small, and extremely charming, Green Hill elephant sanctuary set up by a retired vet and his family just two years ago.  The sanctuary is a perfect retirement home for 6 elderly elephants pensioned off from government logging projects and one young orphaned elephant that was readily adopted by one of the older females.

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The sanctuary not only provides a comfortable home for the elephants – with plenty of land for them to roam and forage for food each night – it also has to house each elephant’s mahout (handler) and their extended families!  There are wooden houses and carefully tended gardens for each mahout, and the sanctuary owners also set up a school for their children and others from the local area. 

 

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Asian elephants eat 150kg of food a day, so making sure the land can support them is vital to the success of the project.  They are also given food supplements at the central compound, and visitors are encouraged to feed them bananas and to help the mahouts wash them in the river.  Luckily we had two willing volunteers to help with the bathing, leaving the rest of us on camera duty.

  Over the last 20 years much of Burma’s primary teak forest has been cut down and sold to raise cash for the military government.  Sadly no one thought to plant more trees until now.  I believe some secondary forests are being established and the elephant sanctuary is doing its bit to help, with each visitor planting a teak seedling – essentially as an advertisement to locals that this is a good thing to do. 

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Before we set off on the day’s cycle to Pindaya we have one final treat in store.  Back at the owner’s house a table on the terrace is set with an array of delicious local food for us to taste.  It’s not long since breakfast, but we tuck in heartily and forgo lunch later in the day.  If you are in the Kalaw area, this is definitely worth a visit.

Donation Ceremonies in Burma

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Buddhism is the main religion of the country and is very much alive and practised by monks and general population alike.  Every Buddhist child will spend at least a week or so in a monastery – as a monk or a nun – almost as a rite of passage.  On doing so, the family pay a donation to the monastery. On our second day of cycling, from Inle Lake to Kalaw we are privileged to be invited into a village home to join in the Donation Ceremony celebration for three young children – a girl and two boys, all under 7. 

 
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While musicians play and adults gather in various rooms around the house drinking green tea and eating the snacks provided, the children dressed in elaborate, brightly coloured and bejewelled costumes – possibly mimicking styles of the royal courtiers in times gone by – are formally photographed in a room upstairs.  Later they will process to the monastery, where their heads are shaved and they stay for a week or more, the boys wearing the maroon monk’s robes, the girls the pink nun’s dress. Our tour guide has spent two separate weeks in a monastery, the first aged 11, the second at 19. While a few will remain as monks for an extended period – or for life-long practice – the majority do not.  Monks who stay can also be released from their vows if they later wish to marry, and older men, who have had their families, can enter, or re-enter the monastery as monks.  A kind of social security, as the people donate to the monastery, the monastery cares for the monks, and also lays out basic food and tea for anyone entering the temple to pray, or otherwise visit.

Two days later, driving to Mandalay, we get caught up in a massive Donation Ceremony procession with hundreds of elaborately costumed adults and children on foot, on horse back, in decorated bullock carts and on the back of motor vehicles – possibly a rich family including many relatives in their celebration.  They are accompanied by a band and a dancing elephant, and we are overjoyed when the elephant – think pantomime horse – stops and performs for us!

Around Inle Lake

Inle Lake introduces the first recurring sound of Burma – the phut, phut, phut of the diesel engine.  In the coming days this will become ubiquitous – used to power long boats on the lakes and rivers and the tractor like vehicles used for transporting both people and goods

Our hotel, Viewpoint, is just off main lake with picturesque cabins over the water.  It’s a great location, the rooms are lovely – more like suites with sitting area separated from bedroom - and we enjoy beautifully presented breakfasts. In fact, most of our hotels are excellent – I get the feeling that tourists have been coming here for a while, despite a widespread boycott before 2010.

We are travelling in the first half of the dry season, which is the coolest part of the year so I’d been prepared for cool mornings and evenings in this area – but not for the degree of outdoor living in Burma.  Our cabins are made of brick, but many of the traditional houses and restaurants are wooden structures with bamboo walls.   It may be picturesque, but with no doors or windows to shut out the evening’s chill, our first night is spent eating a delicious dinner at a local restaurant wearing layers of t-shirts and fleeces topped with our cycling jackets – an experience that’s repeated for several days.

Our first day’s cycling is a gentle tour of villages on the eastern side of the lake, taking in one of Burma’s latest agri-ventures - a vineyard and winery established less than 10 years ago, but already producing several hundred thousand bottles a year.  We are treated to a tasting at 9am! Perhaps it’s the early hour, but even with the help of its French vintner, the Red Mountain label is unlikely to challenge the world’s more established wine regions just yet.  The wine making kit is impressive though, and hopefully this and another winery venture nearby, headed this time by an Austrian vintner, will prove successful in the long run.

 

Our short cycle tour ends at jetty on the lake where we transfer to a more leisurely form of transport – our very own long boat.  This gives us a close up view of the communities living around and on the lake – there are stilted houses and floating market gardens with networks of waterways between, as well as schools, monasteries, pagodas, restaurants, hotels and skilful craft industries including a fascinating lotus and silk weaving centre. It takes thousands of lotus stems, harvested from the lake itself to make a small piece of cloth.  Fine strands are pulled from inside the stem of the lotus, twisted together, roughly spun and dried before the fine spinning and eventual weaving begins.  

The most famous image of the lake is the leg fishermen – so called because they row their skiffs with one leg wrapped around the oar, leaving their hands free to manage their nets.  It’s an extraordinary sight – the wooden oar almost becomes part of the fisherman’s body – and must require extraordinary strength and balance to achieve.

Another stop, at the jumping cat monastery, lacks one thing –the jumping cats – apparently they all died last year during bad weather – but the place is full of kittens who, we are told, it will take 3 years to train to jump through hoops.  I’m not sure if the training process is meant to teach the monks the virtues of patience, or if these elusive cats are just a myth.

 

Burmese Days

 

We fly into Burma in the misty dawn light of 21 December 2013.  Looking down from the plane streaks of low cloud drift between the trees, with rising plumes of smoke pinpointing the villages below.

This is a land that is waking up in every sense.  Not just to herald the cool of another morning but now, after decades of military rule during which the Burmese generals and governments around the world mutually turned their backs on the other, under a relatively new and nominally civilian government the country is gradually opening its borders both to tourism and foreign investment.

Officially these days it’s the Union of Myanmar – the name established by the generals.  But in my mind it is still Burma.  I’m here with Robin and both our fathers fought here in WW2.  The Burma campaign was one of the most horrendous of the war.  Few who fought were willing to talk about their experience, my father among them.  He is one of the reasons why I wanted to visit the country, and I wanted to come now before there is too much 21^st century influence to get a sense of very different culture.

It doesn’t take long to start getting that sense of cultural difference. Yangon Airport’s international terminal is smart and well organised, making it easy to find money changers to change dollars into unfamiliar Kyat (pronounced chat). But we leave the orderly surroundings to find our fellow travellers at the less sparkling domestic terminal.

Because we want to get up close and personal with this amazing country, we are spending the first 12 days of our trip on a bicycle tour that will take us through the Shan Hills, the flatlands of Mandalay and the ancient capitals of Ava and Bagan.

Our cycle group comprises me and Robin, Mark and Jim (two Americans who have sold up home and business to travel the world forever), Barbara and Lisa (from Australia) and Marlene (also American but currently teaching in S Korea). We are flying to Heho, the nearest airport to Inle Lake, where our tour starts.

At Heho we are met by our tour guide (Chan Nyein), our cycle mechanic (Nate Win), Mr Moo and Mr Win who drive the support vehicles, set up the amazing snack stops, fill our water bottles and generally look after us in every way on the road.  They are all part of Grasshopper Adventures, who run cycle and photography tours throughout SE Asia – a company that, on the evidence of this tour, I highly recommend.

Camping in Cornwall

A final back track to August 2013, and the annual trip to Cornwall.  After spending a night at our friend Lisa's house in Launceston, Mary Ann and I headed south to a camp site near Sennon Cove and Lands End, where we spent three days with Viv, her sister Caroline, mum Pauline, and Archie the dog.

Not being natural campers, Viv had borrowed a tent for MA and me, which luckily was a doddle to put up.  Great fun was had by all, with rocky coastal walks by day, and camp fires (ok, calor gas burners) by night. Food in the open air tastes divine, especially when it's washed down with lashings of wine!

 I finished the trip spending a couple of days with my sister, nephews and nieces (large and small) just up the coast in Hayle - a completely different coastline with dune-like cliffs and sandy beaches.  When the sun shines there is no better place to be.

 

When in Rome

Another flashback to 2013.  In May, my birthday treat was a trip to Rome staying in a charming boutique hotel in Campo de Fiori.  This is a great central location - we walked everywhere - with a daily market and surrounded by bars and restaurants from where you can people watch to your hearts content.  I  have never been to a city so full of history - and tourists!  But we had a wonderful time visiting ancient ruins, museums, galleries, gardens, cathedrals and squares, with plenty of time to stop for coffee, drinks and delicious meals.  And, of course I made sure to throw some coins into the Trevi fountain.