Discovering Northwest Myanmar 9: Mawlaik to Who Knows Where!

Mawlaik. I was in Mawlaik a day ahead of schedule. I’m  guessing my reader has never heard of the town of Mawlaik; I certainly hadn’t until I began planning this journey through northwest Myanmar. Mawlaik is a little town on the Chindwin River in northern Sagaing division. There are no banks.

There’s two restaurants and two guesthouses. I recommend the AKZ Guesthouse; the other place didn’t seem like they were ready to accept visitors. 

My biggest concern as I rolled into Mawlaik was how I was going to get across the river the next morning. The Chindwin is a formidable river and there wasn’t any bridge linking to the two sides. If I had continued further north on the western bank of the river, I would have ended up in India and nowhere to go from there. The  continuity of the “loop” demanded that I cross the river. 

I needed help. I have a new friend who works part-time as a translator, Nikki. So from the AKZ Guesthouse, I called her up and asked if she could help me out making arrangements to cross the river. I was willing to pay whatever it cost, but I said I didn’t think it should cost more than 10,000. I ended up paying 10,000 Kyats ($7). 

In the course of the translated conversation, the locals there in Mawlaik were really against the idea of me going to my next destination, 75 miles up the Chindwin River to the town of Pyaungbin. No, they said, Pyaungbin is controlled by drug traffickers and rebels. You shouldn’t go there. It’s not safe!

Ha. Telling me I shouldn’t do something is a surefire way to get me to do it. 

After a white-knuckle crossing of the river (I was so freaked out by the boat trip! I really felt like I was gonna end up in the drink!), I headed up the road north towards Pyaungbin. After about 10 miles, the road conditions got so bad that I had to stop and think about what I was doing. It had been raining recently, and much of the road was mud. Now, the CRF250 motorcycle I was on had no problem getting through the mud, but I didn’t enjoy it. Too many bad memories of motorcycle journeys being thwarted by muddy roads. Heck with it.

My plan for the next day was to take a road that only appeared on some maps. Guaranteed to be a torturous miasma of muddy roads. So, I turned around.

I wasn’t getting back on that boat, and the next accommodation was some 250 km away, almost all the way back to Mandalay. I got a flat tire along the way.  It was already dark when I rolled into Ye-U.    

Discovering Northwest Myanmar 8 - Kalaymyo-Kalewa-Mawlaik

Downtown Kalaymyo decorated for the holiday.
Umbrellas strung across the road.

After a week of daily travel, it was time to take a rest day, get some laundry done and catch up on some videomaking.  The town of Kalaymyo was the perfect place to do so. I still had my very nice room at the Taung Zalat Hotel overlooking the continuing celebrations of the Water Festival. 

I had brought my ukulele with my on the journey as I didn't want to miss any of the weeks of the Seasons of the Ukulele. I had read that there was a local swimming hole some 10 klicks west of town. It was said it had riverside restaurants and beer stations, which I love. Sounded like the perfect place to record an ukulele song.

I hope the ambulance is empty!

Unfortunately, maybe half-way there, I ran into a tremendous traffic jam. This was remarkable for a small town like this, and even on motorbike, there was no way around it. Ah, heck with it. I'd find someplace else.

I did. Even though I had to shoo away local livestock who were sniffing at my lyrics sheet.

The next day, it was time to hit the road again. Time to follow the Myittha River to where it meets the Chindwin at the town of Kalewa. It was a beautiful road! 

The most remarkable thing I found in Kalewa: this marker denotes the
beginning of the India-Myanmar Friendship Road,

Arriving in Kalewa, I was a bit surprised by what I found, or more specifically, what I didn't find. See, Kalewa is listed on a leading Myanmar tourism website as a tourist destination. It's unique geography at a double bend in the Chindwin is touted as breathtaking. I was expecting riverside restaurants, at least! 

I ended up in Mawlaik and stood in the mighty Chindwin.  

Enjoy the video. The bluegrass music theme continues. 

Discovering Northwest Myanmar 7: Rihkawdar to Kalaymyo

I could’ve spent more time up there in Chin State. I mean, I really liked it there. The people, the towns, and most of all, the weather were wonderful. Remember, April is the hottest month of the year in Myanmar, and down in the valleys, the 100-degree, 60% humildity days were sweltering. The clean, crisp air of Chin was quite a relief. 

Sunrise in Chin State

 

As a place to ride a motorcycle, providing you have an enduro-bike with a good suspension, Chin State had been like a dream. The mountain vistas mesmerized me and the roads were in decent condition. The dream soured a bit on the road from Rihkandar to Tedim. On a lesser bike, it would have been a nightmare. 

Fortunately, the CRF250 I’d rented from mandalaymotorbike.com handled to rocky, bumpy roads without much trouble. After Tedim, the road to Kalaymyo was quite smooth. 

 

In Tedim, everyone was going to church. Well, not everyone.

Down from the hills into a valley, the heat was back. However, instant relief was available in the form of Thingyan, the water festival.  Just outside my hotel door, a stage had been set up.

They let me run the hose for a bit.

Hoses busily sprayed truckload after truckload of people out celebrating. A few dozen local youth danced up a storm in front of loudspeakers. I joined in, recording it with my waterproof camera.  When the organizers noticed me, they asked if I would like to record a traditional Thingyan dance. Of course! I’m  sure the dance was planned for later, but they moved it up just for me.

This first video shows the trip out of Chin to Kalymyo.

The second video is just the Thingyan dance and the goings on around it.  

Discovering Northwest Myanmar 6: Falam to Rih Lake

On the road in Chin State

After showing me the facilities, such as they were at the rather spartan Holy Guesthouse in Falam, the hotelier lady, who was hilarious even though she had not a word of English, gave me a second key. This one was just for me. Other guests didn’t get this key. Why not? What’s behind the locked door? You’ll see in the video. 

On my trip from Falam to Rih Lake, I was going through the heart of Chin state, so I was expecting yet more spectacular mountain vistas and lots of interesting stuff along the way. One thing I didn’t know was exactly the route I’d be taking. Zach at mandalaymotorbike.com had told me that there was a road connecting Falam and Rih. He’d had previous clients who’d traveled on it and had said it was pretty good. But it’s not on any map, neither printed or online. I knew it was there. The day before, I’d seen where it split off from the Falam-Hakha road. 

Which way do I go?

Consequently, at several points along the way, I came to forks in the road and I couldn’t rely on my trusty friend Google Maps to help me. There were signs, but entirely in the Myanmar alphabet. Even though I’ve been here 4 years now, I still only have a limited ability to read the local language. It proved to be enough. I knew the letter “R”. One road went to a place beginning with “R” and the other did not. “Rih Lake” begins with “R”… Must be that way. 

The famous heart-shaped lake. Looked more like a lima bean.
Or a big swimming pool.

When I finally got to Rih Lake, it was kinda anti-climactic. Sure, it was pretty to look at, but the only vantage point was packed full of people. It was a holiday, and there were lots of local tourists there playing music very loudly. It wasn’t as peaceful as has been promoted. Oh well. 

 

Interesting thing about Chin houses: they've got open fire pits inside the home. It's
how they keep warm. There's a chimney in the ceiling.

Bridges? Border crossings? Bah! We need them not.

Actually, I was more excited about visiting the border town of Rihkawthar, and I was fortunate to find lodgings there. The most exciting part of the day was trying to walk over the bridge into India. 

As I mentioned, it was the second day of the Thingyan Water Festival, and whereas most of the town is Christian (Thingyan is a Buddhist holiday), there was one area, set up right next to the bridge to India, where the furious water throwing was going on. Pretty much everybody who was crossing the bridge one way or the other got doused.  Welcome to Myanmar! SPLASH! 

No one is safe. Not even old men on motorbikes. 

 Enjoy the video.

Discovering Northwest Myanmar 5: Hakha to Falam

In Part 5, we continue our adventures through Chin State. Just a few years back, It would have quite remarkable that I was even up there. Like much of Myanmar, Chin had been closed to foreign tourists for decades. The few that did make it up there were invariably accompanied by gov’t approved tour guides on gov’t run travel packages. This little state, landlocked between India and Myanmar hasn’t had many tourists until recently. 

They like to paint their houses in vivid colors

Some facts about Chin State: At about 15,000 square miles, it’s roughly the size of Switzerland. About 2/3^rd the size of West Virginia and one and half times bigger than Vermont. Whereas 8 million people live in Switzerland and 2 million reside in West Virginia, the population of Chin is a bit shy of 500,000. And like these other places, it’s all mountainous. I can’t say that I saw a single bit of horizontal land in the whole state that people hadn’t made that way. 

Being so sparsely populated, there are only a few real towns in the state. In this episode, I travel between two of them which aren’t very far apart: Hakka (the new capital) and Falam (the old capital).

Again, I was taken in by the amazing mountain views I got to see and noticed a few things. Chin burial customs involve roads. At almost every major turn in the road, at almost every spot where you could look out and see spectacular vistas of expansive mountains and valleys, there were graves.

Not graveyards, just graves. Two or three, up to eight perhaps if it was remarkably beautiful spot. And of course, memorials to the dead. Structures to preserve them from the elements. It was kind of odd that at every point when I wanted to stop and take a picture of the remarkable landscape, that I was doing so alongside someone’s dead uncle, but I’m not superstitious in that regard. If there’s life-after-death, ghosts, that sort of thing, I’d think any human soul would appreciate what I was doing, and wouldn’t be offended if I needed to go pee on the periphery of their gravesite. 

 

Breakfast in Hakha

I got to Falam, a very religious town which I’ve heard recently tried to ban alcohol sales within the town limits.

Having a nose for these sorts of things, I found that this ban would involve shutting down one shop, because it seemed there was only one place in town to get a beer. 

Enjoy the video