Mandalay
ByMandalay was our springboard to northern Myanmar. On our arrival the Full Moon Festival was still in full swing here too. Popping in to see friends we were promptly invited to a Full Moon party and snacking on tasty treats cooked in a huge wok of oil. Our contribution was a locally baked cake.
The city is dominated by Mandalay Hill and being experienced pilgrims we opted to climb it barefoot. This of course brings you into better contact with a whole range of jovial, friendly and welcoming fellow pilgrims, not to mention more monks. We enjoyed numerous conversations, swapped e-mail addresses, listened to stories and picked up tips.
One of these was to see the biggest book in the world. In a nearby pagoda at the base of the hill the whole Buddhist liturgy has been inscribed on 729 marble slabs, each housed in its own white stupa.
Bicycle rickshaws are a fun way to get around Mandalay. The markets are colourful and vibrant and teaming with novice nuns. These shy, demure head shaven young girls, all dressed in pink robes seemed to flit from background to foreground in the blink of an eye. One rickshaw driver took us into a convent to watch the nuns eating their mid day meal. We don’t know why exactly and since no one spoke English and we didn’t speak Burmese all we could do was smile and nod. Everyone seemed happy with that arrangement.
There are some sights which need to be stared at in wonder. One of these was U Bein’s bridge. He built his bridge of teak logs across a shallow lake two hundred years ago. Incredibly that amazing bridge, well over a kilometre long, still stands high over the lake and is used by thousands of local people every day. The silhouettes of monks, women with pots on their heads and bicyclists wending their way home on the tall bridge at dusk is just visually stunning.
Another feast of interest is the transformation of blocks of marble into benign smiling Buddhas at the hands of expert craftsmen. Lovingly polished by teams of chatting, laughing girls under trees with permanently white stone dust frosted leaves lingers in the memory of this lovely country.
Huddled bundles snoozed peacefully on the platforms of Mandalay as we made our way toward another early train heading north over mountains. Settling down onto the wooden slatted seats of the first class compartment we used our torches to help a pleasant young woman stow her chickens under her seat. To climb the steep gradients the train zig zagged up the side of the mountain to reach the plateau and the line to Lasio, near the Chinese border. Chatting to fellow passengers, smiling at the kids and buying meals from trackside vendors the journey sped by. At one station people told us about separatist guerrillas being active in the area and shots having been fired the month before. A glance at the armed policeman sleeping in our compartment however suggested that tensions had slacked since then.
The highest railway bridge built in the British Empire spanned a gorge on our line. Photographing bridges is technically prohibited in Myanmar but we’d encountered no problems so far. But a steely glare from a fully armed soldier guarding the bridge left no room for doubt that this bridge was different.
The country towns were absolutely delightful. People smiled, waved across the road and chatted inquisitively. Older folk talked about the British Days with nostalgia peppering their accounts with facts and figures to bolster what may have been just happy memories of youth. Rudimentary Myanmar language was sufficient to get directions to features like waterfalls on our treks into the countryside. The only offence I think we caused was to a water buffalo who definitely took a dislike to us. But his young woman owner just laughed at her spooked animal.
Our northbound meanderings took us to the frontier town of Bhamo, the highest navigable stretch of the mighty Irrawaddy River, and only a few kilometres from the Chinese border. Here we stayed overnight in the Friendship hotel and met several Chinese tourists. In particular we talked with a young Chinese professional photographer on an assignment to photograph places in Myanmar for Chinese tourist publications.
