The Road to Mandalay Part 3 : Kalaw

:: Almost Full..... ::

Leaving Inle behind we jumped in a local pickup truck, waited for it to fill up with other tourists and locals, and when full ....we squeezed in more people and trundled off at snails pace. Somehow our antique vehicles exhaust managed to belch all the exhaust fumes into the passenger area. During the first 5 minutes of the journey there was lots of talk between all the western tourists. After about 20 minutes an overwhelming feeling of tiredness kicked in, total silence prevailed as the carbon monoxide headaches developed. Eventually we reached the Shwenyaung junction where we took a few deep breaths and found another pickup going to our destination of Kalaw high up in the hills. Another hour down the road and we were shunted into yet another pickup truck that took us the scenic route via the a local market where it dropped off some cargo, we hand delivered letters to some business and collected and delivered a 44 gallon drum of petrol before continuing on to our destination.

:: The Old & The New - Paulong Manuscripts ::

Kalaw was a popular cool destination for British to escape the heat of other areas in Burma during colonial times. Nowadays it's slowly turning into a backpacker town and base for trekking - lots of tourists hike from Kalaw to Inle lake on a 3 day 2 night outing. We missed the boat on that one so settled for a one day hike up into some of the local villages around Kalaw. Unfortunately we chose the worst day and ended up drenched and literally up to our knees in mud. Despite the mud we'd a great day, our guide answered numerous of our questions about Myanmar stretching to "has Myanmar ever won a medal at the Olympics?"

:: Our Host & Paulong Writer ::

After a few hours hiking through the tea and orange tree plantations we stopped for lunch in a house of a local village man for lunch. Our host was bent over a manuscript carefully transcribing lines from an old text for the local monastery, he is regularly commissioned to reproduce texts of the story of his tribe. He is the (only) writer in the Paulong village. He passed on the skills of writing the Paulong language to his son who is now a monk in the village. The book he was transcribing was of Buddhas life, from a copy he wrote a number of years ago. Traditionally the books are made from a large number of paper sheets glued together. The ink is made from tea leaves ... mix it with the pigs gallbladder. It was a few hours of slipping and sliding in the mud later when we dropped back into Kalaw town. After a couple of refreshing Myanmar Beers we trudged back to the guesthouse for welcome hot shower.

:: Flooded Rice Paddies around Kalaw ::

An early 7am start the following morning saw us rushing out of the guest house (a soft boiled egg in hand for breakfast) to wait on the side of the main road for the Bagan bus to pass through somewhere between 6:45am and 8am. When it arrived the bus was already pretty full i.e. all the seats in the aisle had bums on them and so we'd to negotiate ourselves into our seat assignment which luckily happened to be the only two seats available. Three hours later we all got a breath of fresh air when the bus emptied out to watch the bus helpers change a flat tyre. We were very fortunate and managed to go until 3.30pm that afternoon before we experienced our second puncture which auspiciously occurred within spitting distance of a puncture repair outfit. As darkness fell we finally arrived in Bagan and began the accommodation search - enviously passing restaurant after restaurant of tourists tucking into dinner and frosty beers.

:: It really was muddy ::