Discovering Northwest Myanmar 10: Ye-U to Indaw

Having just gone through a grueling ride the day before on my detour down to Ye-U, I wasn’t looking forward to another 250km slog through what I thought was going to be rather boring, dry landscape. My goal on day 11 of the trip was to get to the town of Indaw, which, according to google maps, had accommodations. 

Bike needed washing again

I was back down in agricultural heartland of Myanmar, and so I had expected to see mostly just farmland. Instead, this road through Sagaing Division was as varied and interesting as any other. There were rolling hills, tree-lined smooth highways, scrublands and forests. 

One of the most pleasant aspects of riding through Myanmar is that everywhere you go, most of the highways are
lined with lush trees. It's like driving through a green cave.

 

Seeing a Buddhist monk on a motorbike always fascinates me. This one is being joined by a few
hundred of his brothers over on the left side of the road.

This is what a truck normally does when you want to pass. They move
over a bit.

When it comes to the driving part, my biggest challenge of the day was getting round a military convoy. Half a dozen large military trucks full of soldiers with assault weapons were making their way up the road (I won’t say where exactly) at a speed that was just a bit slower than I wanted to go. Normally, when there’s a truck in the way on a narrow highway, one simply gives a friendly tap on the horn, and the truck will move over a bit and let one by. Well, first of all, these trucks were so big, they didn’t really have space to do that without going off on the shoulder. Second, there’s a natural reluctance to honk at a truckload of armed men to tell them to get out of one’s way. Hey Myanmar military! Get out of my way! I’m coming through. Umm… No. 

Umm.. excuse me.. sorry to ask..umm... if it's not too
much trouble... could I get by please?

With other big trucks on narrow roads, another option in passing them is to wait for another truck to come along the opposite direction. In those instances, both trucks have to slow down and go off onto the shoulders to pass each other. Then, simply use the motorbike’s superior acceleration to get by. By chance, there were no trucks coming the other way, and so for mile after mile I was stuck behind these dust-churning trucks being stared at sternly by the curious soldiers.  

Unfortunately, you won’t see much of this on the video. Somehow, I thought recording troop movements on my GoPro might get me in trouble. I do live in a country which is still experiencing armed conflict (more on that in later blogs). 

Indaw is a medium-sized town not too from the border with Kachin State. Nothing all that remarkable about it except for the truck graveyard I happened to come across. 

Enjoy the video!  Bluegrass version of a Guns N’ Roses hit! 

Discovering Northwest Myanmar 4: Gangaw to Hakha

Leaving one of the few guesthouses

Sunrise in Gangaw

in Gangaw, I was ready from some real mountain roads. Long, straight, smooth roads with gorgeous scenery around have their place. They can be enjoyable. But what every motorcycle tourist likes are windy roads – roads where you lean into your turn and accelerate out of it. Not to mention that the topographical attractions of mountains are nicer to look at. 

After a ways of brown, scrubby hills, the road definitely turned up an incline. Finally heading into Chin State. Chin is one of the smallest and least populous areas of the country of Myanmar. Their people are known for being strongly Christian, excellent hunters and a bit outside of more mainstream Burmese existence. 

Hakha... that way.

I’d been there before. On my last long motorbike tour, I visited Kampletlet an Mindat in southern Chin, but got turned back on my little scooter by the road conditions. Not this time. 

Eventually, I found myself at thousands of feet of elevation, riding down some gorgeous roads. As I’m a bit afraid of heights, what was somewhat disconcerting was the mile after mile of driving along roads where on one side, there’s a wall of rock, and on the other, there’s no guardrail and a steep drop of hundreds and hundreds of feet. 

Rolling into beautiful, Hakha, I was impressed by the view overlooking the city.  Hakha may not be around much longer in its current form.

There are plans to move the entire city due to constant danger of landslides during the rainy season. Just a few years ago, one third of the town was wiped away due to massive landslides. All the roads were blocked and Hakha was cut off. It’s hard to see signs of that damage today, but I’m no expert at spotting it.

Hakha has an “Old-West” feel to it. The buildings are all made of wood and strung together haphazardly.

The people are nice though. I didn’t have a meal in Hakha without at least one person sitting down next to me, asking me to join them

Enjoy the video.

Technical note: the problem with the 4:3 video format cropped up again. This time, I figured out what caused it, so this will be the last we'll see of it.  Note also there's "bonus material" at the end of the musical part. Continuing the bluegrass music theme.

Sampling some Chin Wine.

Myanmar Motorcycle Journey 7 - Pinlaung to Loikaw

Cold. Oh, I was so cold. I thought I had been cold a few days previous, up in Kalaw, but this was a kind of coldness I had not experienced since leaving America.  I should point out that the town I was leaving, Pinlaung, has an elevation of 4800 feet (1460m). The temperature on the thermometer was all of 55F (13C), but I was moving on my motorbike, the air was thick with fog, and the sun had not yet risen over the ridge of the mountains. And I was wearing shorts. I didn't bring pants with me on the journey. Now, Pinlaung to Loikaw was another short stage, only 90km (55 miles); I could have just holed up in a tea house or someplace and waited it out until the air got warmer. No, with the help of some cold weather gear I bought along the way, I kept going.

In the town of Pekon, my breakfast was a bowl of Mohingga, the traditional Myanmar morning soup. My eyes and camera were open, looking for anything I could that I remembered from reading The Land a Green Ghosts, a remarkable and award-winning memoir by Pascal Khoo Thwe about growing up as a hill tribesman and the political upheaval in Myanmar in the late 80's and 90's. Much of the book is set in Pekon, and it was a real thrill for me to be visiting the town that had fascinated me so much in print. Literary tourism is a real thing, but it hasn't come to Pekon as of yet. There were no big signs saying "FORMER HOME OF PASCAL KHOO THWE THIS WAY!", but I did find one building mentioned quite a bit in the book, the town's main Catholic Church; most of the Padaung tribe are Catholic, not Buddhist.

Soon after leaving Pekon, I found myself in Loikaw, the capital of the state of Kayah. I found Loikaw to be a town of two halves. The north part of town had big, wide streets, sidewalks, landscaping, smooth flowing traffic and lots of beautiful buildings and monuments. Cross a one-lane bridge to the south part of town and you're in a crowded, chaotic, dusty Myanmar city.

As you'll see in the video, my activities in Loikaw included finding a hotel, visiting the amazing Taung Kwel Zaydi pagodas and having a dinner I'll never forget. Continuing the theme of my favorite ukulele music in the background, enjoy!


Road Report:
Distance: 89 km
Travel time: 3 hours
Road conditions (see the key): Excellent 2%, Good 83%, Fair 15%

Myanmar Motorcycle Journey 6 - Pinlaung

Christmas 2015 was rare in that it landed on a full moon. Well, at least that's what I thought as I stared into the clear skies of the Shan Hills. Sure looked like a fool moon. I imagine it's hard to pinpoint exactly which day the full moon falls. I mean, at the moment, it's one day here, but on the other side of the planet, it's still yesterday. There's probably some council of astronomers somewhere who make this decision.

The term "towel head" is a racial slur, but not against these
Shan women who literally wear towels on their heads.

So, actually, the full moon was on the 26^th. As full moons are always holidays in Theraveda Buddhism, and the one for this month particularly so, I saw lots of celebrations and ceremonies on the roads of Myanmar as I made my way from Inle Lake to Pinlaung.

At the end of the video for Part 5 of this series, I ended it by showing a remarkable procession playing haunting, mystical music. What was the procession for? You'll see in the video.
The best reason to visit Pinlaung is to go up to Loi Maung Taung Pagoda. The view from up there, wow, even the locals who go there every day to pray are amazed by the vistas. 

Local kids are just as impressed as anyone

Near the top, the road becomes bad, but it so worth it. 

Another thing I did in Pinlaung is gather information. See, one of the scary parts about going there is that there was absolutely no tourist information about the place online whatsoever. No page in any travel guide. No reviews of any sort. My friend had told me there was a hotel, and as you saw, I found it just fine. One thing I am going to do now, however, is to create a Wikitravel (the travelers version of Wikipedia) page for the place. I found out about buses, trips up to the pagodas, I can review two restaurants there and as you'll see late in the video, I stopped at the other hotel in town to inquire about rates. I think of it as doing my good deed for the internet. 

Enjoy the video (have you noticed a theme in regards to the music?)

 

Myanmar Motorcycle Journey 4: Inle Lake

Inle Lake is one of the “Big Three” of places to see if you're a tourist in Myanmar, the other two being Bagan and Mandalay. Up until this week, I had been to none of these places. I'd heard good and bad things about Inle, but one thing for sure that I had determined is that I was not going to have a 'typical' tourist experience there.


About a year ago, I read this article on the internet  . Ooo... It described a place near Inle, accessible only by river that even the locals didn't visit. Filled with ancient pagodas slowly being eaten up by the surrounding jungle. How fascinating! So, my goal early on was to visit Inn Dein, the site of these ruins. Eventually, as my plans included my friend Dean who took a bus from Naypyitaw to meet me there, we decided to see the lake on a beeline to Inn Dein.

As you'll see in the video, Inn Dein was anything but what was described in the article. It wasn't some remote, unvisited, forgotten temple complex. It was filled with tourists! So be it. It was still an incredible experience to see these stupas in their state and imagine what it was like 500 years ago when they were new. Inle Lake and its surroundings had been the center of power for the various tribes of the Shan people. I was in Shan State, and the people there are not Burmese, in that the word “Burmese” derives from the word “Bamar”, the dominant ethnic group in the rest of the country. Shan people are actually more connected ethnographically to the Thai than the Bamar.

But I digress. Inle Lake was magical. It kind of reminded me of Lake Tahoe in California in that it was a natural lake high up in the mountains surrounded by hills. Moreover, I heard strange, magical music. Hearing noises that aren't there isn't a great attestation to one's mental health, but I'm admitting it anyways. Over the roar of the boat's engines, I heard a haunting, delicate and subtle melody that kept kept changing unpredictably, as does all Myanmar music. It sounded like it was coming out of some kind of pipe instrument. I only heard when the boat engine was roaring. None of my travel companions heard it. It was probably just some kind of auditory hallucination, but I'll chalk it up to the power of this long revered holy place.

All in all, I really enjoyed this 'rest day' (I didn't drive anywhere) in Inle. The food was amazing, I got to see what I wanted to see and got to experience what makes this place what it is.