Discovering Northwest Myanmar 2: Sagaing to Pale and Hpowintaung

One thing I was thinking about in the planning of this motorcycle journey was not taxing myself. See, touring on a motorbike through an exotic land like Myanmar is enjoyable thing...  for the first four or five hours. If you ride longer than that, then it’s no longer enjoyable. Then it becomes a slough. So in the planning of this trip, which I’m still on, I made sure not to schedule any really long grueling rides of 250 km+. I wanted to enjoy my rides, not be burdened by them.

Another cool aspect of only scheduling 4 hours of driving per day is that you don’t have to leave in a hurry. As I prepared to leave Sagaing, I took my time. I took in the sunrise.

Checked out the morning market. Got a few essentials. 

Always good joo joo to donate at the roadside 

The road to Pale was easy. I got there about noon. Zach from MandalayMotorbike.com texted me to see how I was doing. Arrived in Pale, I told him, but without plans for the rest of the afternoon. He suggested I visit the caves at Phowintaung.  Why not?

The road was rough, but completely manageable on the CRF250 (man, I gotta get one of these for my own). Turned out that the “caves” were man-made. Buddhist devotees had carved these enclaves out of the living rock hundreds of years ago, and they’ll be here for hundreds, if not thousands of years into the future. 

The monkeys were interesting. Monkeys are always interesting.  

 Enjoy the video...