As I made my way through South East Asia I was constantly looking at the final destination of Myanmar. As I’ve explained before, there were many things about the country that attracted me – most of those things taking shape in an article here on AJourneySonder. Someplace I had never heard of before I started the trip, but that made itself known in the whisperings of various travelers I passed on my way through that part of the world, was Inle Lake.
That photo isn’t Inle Lake. No, not at all! Do you see water? But even as far back as Luang Prabang I’d heard of a fun activity in a budding industry out near the lake. Then when I got to Ngwesaung our friend Emilie mentioned the same activity – she had her eyes set on the exact same thing! And the night of fun we had freezing out butts off on the beach where we met the locals, a girl by the name of Zuzu alluded to the activity too when we shared ambitions to both someday open a hostel. She didn’t mention Inle, but she did mention Kalaw.
So what’s with all this setup? Why is any of this important to the article? Well, that particular activity of which I speak is a trek. The reason you see the beautiful Kyle and my sunbathing self sitting atop a rock overlooking a wide-stretching valley is because we decided to walk, for three days, from the city of Kalaw to Lake Inle itself.
The Kalaw-Inle Trek was what I’d heard from a French traveler back in Luang Prabang. She said she’d done it – with zero experience – and enjoyed the entire thing immensely. Kalaw is about, on average, 1320m above sea-level. Inle Lake is about 900m above sea-level. But it’s not as simple as walking down from A to B, there’s also something like 8-10 mountains to be climbed on that walk, most of them as high or higher than the ones you see at the back of the photo above. The walk itself is an average of about 20km per day, for a total of about 60km. Walking. With little experience myself, Kyle and I knew it was the exact sort of experience we wanted to have.
Day 1 – Make Plans and Head Off!
Arriving in Kalaw we were presented with an entire street dedicated almost completely to companies that led groups on tours through the mountains from Kalaw to Inle. I expected maybe 3 or 4 companies based on online reviews, but it was more like 8+, so we had our pick. We quickly did a few comparisons before heading to our hostel and booking through them anyway. In the end, we chose to go with Jungle King Trekking because we were told they had a more vegetarian-style menu for their meals. Per person the cost worked out to be 40,000 MMK (~$27.19). That’s for three days, a guide with very good English, a place to sleep each night, 2 breakfasts, 3 lunches, and 2 dinners, a boat tour on Inle Lake once you get there, and 2-4 cultural “exhibits” during that tour. The price is absolutely unbeatable.
Speaking of guides with really good English, here he is, the fantastic Francisco! He was our guide and he was the absolute best! Honestly he was going to get an article in the “People from the Journey” section of the blog, but I never got my Facebook friend request to interview him. First of all, his English was spectacular, even if he would tell you it wasn’t. Second of all, he was criminally friendly. Our first interaction with him involved a smile on his face that never faded for the entire trip. In fact, the only time we saw even the slightest inkling that he might have any emotion even remotely related to annoyance was when we demanded a goodbye photo despite him being 20 minutes late to meet his ride back to Kalaw – he still took the photo, though. After our trek, Kyle and I tried to imagine hypothetical scenarios with Francisco being involved in some sort of physical confrontation, but they all ended with us agreeing Francisco would be able to not only reason why he shouldn’t use violence, but also being able to convince his attacker why aggression wasn’t the way. He was always laughing or talking to us about his life. Me and him shared many discussions about Myanmar history or social situations. The dude would always put up with me and Kyle’s insane hypothetical questions and respond (mostly) to all of them. He would constantly help serve and clean up at mealtimes – he even taught me how to make a really good garlic/chili sauce. This man has calves of steel, or at least must, considering he makes the Kalaw to Inle trek no less than twice a week. He lived in the USA for five years and saw more of the country than I have. And above all, Francisco is a family man. The entire reason he works so hard leading foreigners through the mountains is so he can support his son, his wife, and his soon to be newborn child. I have an insane amount of respect for Francisco and I dearly hope to meet him against someday.
That first day, setting out at 9am, was a dusty one. Most of Myanmar is often very hot, but in Kalaw – which is high on the Shan Plateau – it is not. It got to be around 4c the night before we left and it took a while for us to warm up with the sun. The trek started with a tour through Kalaw itself, walking along the side of a mountain to reach the top while seeing the locals chopping trees or herding their cows. The cows were cute and paid us no mind the two times we saw them. But the views, people!
I’m really not sure I’ve ever seen anything like it. None of the photos of valleys I plan to post in this article were taken in the same place. There’s just a crazy amount of mountain ranges and valleys to enjoy along this walk. Each time we found a place worthy of a photo, the whole group would get Francisco to wait so we could snap tons of our own pictures.
This photo is what was behind me when I took that previous valley photo. The biodiversity of plants in this part of the world, as you will see as you continue to read, is absolutely stunning. On that first day, I was greeted primarily by very dry soil and a plethora of pine trees or pine shrubs. Other trees grew, of course, but for the most part, pines dominated the area becoming more prevalent the higher up the mountain we got. I was reminded, overall, of a Minnesotan landscape as we made our way on the trip. It was the dry season as well and so all of the dead grass made sense.
We continued on and at one point we all took notice of the color of the mountains around us. Not only was there the brownish-tan of the dead grass and freshly harvested rice (they had harvested only a week prior in some places), but there were also greens and reds, sometimes mixed. It turns out the red mostly came from chilis for which the area was at the beginning of harvest-time. At some places we found people picking the chilis, at others we found some orangish ones still growing. Other places we found them drying in very large mats. Considering birds don’t taste spiciness and would consider this a buffet you might think it wasn’t the best way to leave so many of the things, but as is common in the rest of SEA, birds are not very common at all due to hunting, so the process works out. I took a chili or two to taste and really enjoyed it, though. The rest of the group made fun of me, but I swear the chilis here were much fruitier in flavor than most you’d buy in the supermarket.
Many sights like this adorn the tops of mountains. A cute butte atop a mountain. No one was around but it is certainly taken care of. With two bamboo stairs before a rickety steel one, someone makes sure the public can get to the top to pay respect to Buddha. From here, though, it was only about 20 minutes until we reached our first homestay for the trip.
As we walked into town barely anyone paid us any mind. They receive groups of foreigners every night from Jungle King Trekking and it’s barely special to them anymore. I did take notice of a toddler just old enough to walk first viewing us with bewilderment before it twisted into fear and he ran off to find his mother, but the other kids carried about their business. Most of the buildings were made out of reed/bamboo mats. Maybe 40% of them were more modern, with insulated concrete blocks, glass windows, and solar generators to power the most basic of lights. We stayed in one of the more modern buildings which had a supply of coke-a-cola and beer for sale (because foreigners are predictable) and got a tour of their house. A cement outhouse down the hill at the back, and a “shower” slightly up the hill from there. By shower I mean a large circular tub about 1.5 meters high filled from a hose daily from which they get their clean water. Want a shower? Grab a bowl, fill it with water from that tub, pour it over yourself. By the way the tub is sitting outside in the cold air all night so it’s one step above freezing; it’s like the ice-bucket challenge.
That night they made us dinner, all pescatarian! Kalaw, Inle, and whatever tiny town at the top of a mountain we found ourselves in that night sits in Shan State in Myanmar which is populated primarily with Thai people; literally, they are ethnically Thai. This tiny village, though, is actually populated by Palaung people. It’s an ethnic group that exists in both Myanmar and China. Turns out Shan State is home to something like 15 different ethnic groups. They all get along with each other fairly well, though there are some armed insurgencies fighting the Bamar-centric government of Myanmar. For the most part, at least in the area we were walking through, everyone was pretty chill. For dinner the woman made tons of rice, cauliflower, eggplant, fried tofu, fried fish, one or two other dishes I know I’m forgetting, and a really good chili paste to spice things up. It was all delicious and we devoured that meal like starving beasts. Two kitties accompanied us at our meal to get some table scraps. They know their local owners wouldn’t feed them during a meal, but they also know foreigners are much more exploitable. The woman taught me some of their language too! They were so friendly and nice, and when it came time for bed at around 9pm – because we spent the day walking 20kms up and down mountains, in addition to having no lights after that time – they made sure we had enough blankets to make it through the near-freezing night.
Day 2 – The Second Day
The next day started very early for me. Around 4:45am, I think. I can’t be sure because my phone read 5:15, but I hadn’t realized it was reading me the wrong time zone because of odd airplane mode shenanigans. The trip had no electricity available for phone charging, and because my phone battery never wants to last more than 10 hours on a good day it needed to stay in airplane mode the entire time to maximize photo-taking opportunities. As a result, I took fewer photos on day 2, but I did manage to snap this gorgeous sunrise while everyone else was in the process of waking up.
Before you knew it the woman of the house had prepared us all breakfast. We got orange, watermelon, banana, a potato curry, avocado (because they grow naturally here), sugar, and a local fried bread somewhere between naan and fried dough. I stuffed my face with the bread! As you can see in the background the cats came back out to us and indeed I think one of them stole half of one of the breads too! We didn’t mind because she was so scrawny. We took maybe 30 minutes to enjoy breakfast, we paid the woman her fair share of cash for the beer some of us had drunk the night before, and Francisco led us on our way back out into the mountains.
It was no less beautiful on the second day. This was a very interesting weather effect we were privy to as we came down from the mountain village. On all sides, mountains or hills. With the increase in temperature from the sun the air got a little hot, while the valley stayed cooler due in part to the fog and to the shade of the surrounding mountains. Therefore a natural bowl of fog formed as the cooler air sank. Kyle had never seen anything like it before and was super excited. I’d thought I’d seen something like it once before, but never in such a clearly contrasted way between mountain and valley with such opaque fog. It was pretty cool to see.
This day was a little more relaxed than the first because we had the same distance to go, but an extra hour or two to do it. As surprising as it was, my legs weren’t really strained from the first 20km and so I tackled everything pretty much without issues. At times I was short of breath, but as you ascend mountain passes that much is to be expected. We got the chance to swim in a frigid mountain stream about 2/3 of the way through the hike. I took a dip in the clear blue water but for some reason I failed to take any photos of the place. A shame too because a nice friendly water buffalo came to swim with us while his owner scrubbed him down. The suspect brown clods that came swirling downstream from the buffalo were not friendly, but they made for a spectacle as we dodged them while timing when to enter or exit the water.
The lands after the river were deserted for the most part. Nearly all of it farmland, but deserted. They grew mostly rice here and we got to the area just as the dry season began – with no rain, there’s no way they can grow rice. In fact, during our time on this trek there wasn’t a single drop of rain. Thinking back now, there wasn’t a single drop of rain the entire time I was in Myanmar…
This photo looks down on the way we came. At the very bottom of it is where the previous photo was taken from. From there I felt as though we could see all the way back from where we started the day. It may have been some wishful thinking on my part, but even if I couldn’t actually see the 20km back I certainly got that sense of accomplishment that comes with having just walked all that way. And if you take note of the plants here, in comparison to day one, you’d notice there are far more leafy trees than pine trees. From this vantage point we were only about half an hour from our final destination for the day.
That’s right, another monastery. My second time staying in one on The Journey! This one is set up quite differently though. Whereas Wat Pa Tam Wua was staffed by more or less experienced adult monks, this one had twice as many children as it did adults. Why? In Myanmar it is actually very common for families who can’t support their children to have those children go off to live in a monastery for a few years. You can think of it like boarding school, but with no tuition, because the children do get aid from the central government to attend public school and learn everything any other child would. As far as I can tell children often go to the monastery around 4 or 5, and then they stay until either:
- The parents want them back to help with domestic work like harvesting. Though if they ask for them back they must be able to provide for the child because the child can’t return to the monastery.
- The child turns 18 (or 20?). At that age the child must decide to either remain at the monastery and continue life as a monk or return to their family and live the life of a layperson. There is no pressure to stay, as far as I can tell, but leaving the monkhood after a certain age does generate a lot of negative karma.
Sadly enough Francisco told me that just a month before we stayed there the abbot had died and the older monks were doing what they could to keep the monastery running the way it normally would, which meant the older monks didn’t have as much time to devote to the kids as they normally should because they needed to find a new abbot while performing the old abbots community duties. It makes for some lonely kids. With that in mind, and with encouragement from Francisco, I hung out with the kids and helped them with their English homework. I also taught one how to finger-gun snap with both hands, how to wink, and how to do them both together so he could look cooler than I ever did as a primary-age student. We all enjoyed that before we had another fantastic meal!
This time no photo of the food as the only light came from very dim candles. But I’ll give you one of the sunset because I missed it the first night. Then it was off to bed in total darkness, because again no lights or electricity, but this time our trekking group stayed inside the main hall of the monastery along with perhaps another 4 or 5 groups, at least two of which were from a completely different company.
Day 3 – The Final Trek
As Francisco had always told us would be the case, day 3 was the most difficult of the bunch. We only had to walk about 19km, but we only had 7 hours to do it, which was something like 2 to 3 hours fewer than we had the other two days. For our group it was no problem as we were always the group in the lead. We were lucky in the fact that within 10 minutes of leaving the monastery we reached what is designated as the Inle Lake area! Up an actual road we found ourselves looking out to even more fog-covered mountains. At the crest of that mountainside-hugging road we came to a small shack.
The shack was in fact a ticket office. Now we had been told about this ticket office before heading off, we were also told about the 15000MMK ($10. 20) ticket price for foreigners. And personally, I’m completely fine with paying to get into the area. I’m not so happy about the distribution of funds for that ticket. I didn’t discuss it in my article on Bagan, but most of the time these funds are funneled directly to government offices and so they act more like a tax. At Bagan, for my 25,000MMK ($17) around 90% went to the central government, 8% went to the company operating the ticketing service, and only 2% went toward preserving the aging monuments. At Inle it’s a little better but still needs improvement. Currently of the money you spend to go there, which needs to be respent every 5 days, 45% goes to the central government, 45% goes to a fund designed to maintain Inle Lake area, 6% goes to the ticket company, 2% goes to the advertising agency, and the last 2% goes to local NGOs. Considering Inle Lake is rapidly declining, they might want to allocate a bit more to numbers two and five. Getting down from my soapbox now!
It is such a shame that these are the only two photos I really got of our walk down the mountain that day. As I said there was no electricity for charging during this walk and so by this point I was down to around 10% battery, but we weren’t even at the lake yet! So I took pictures sparingly. I will say that much of the area around the paths where we walked in the beginning reminded me of the kind of plant life you’d find in Arizona including three different types of cacti chilling out next to some trees or shrubs. Then we walked through dry rapids/riverbeds littered with jagged stones of all sorts where the leftover soil was practically orange sand, and man-made levees appeared either against the dirt or in the middle of those riverbeds themselves to prevent landslides or flooding. We also walked down a really slippery decline made entirely out of boulders as moist plant life hung overhead. Then before we knew it we were in a town somewhere between that ever-evolving landscape and the lake itself. We had lunch, I finally got to add 15% charge to my phone, and then we took off.
In that thing! In our group there were nine people, add in Francisco and the driver and this long skinny boat was holding 11. Only the driver and whoever was in the back got a chair, the rest of us had to make do sitting scrunched up with our feet pressed against one side, our backs pressed against the other, and our knees hanging out somewhere near our chin. It wasn’t so bad in the beginning and we frequently got out to enjoy the tour of a couple of local industries.
Here you have a couple of women working a forge and melting down silver for jewelry. It’s their everyday job and they were quite good at it. It seemed legit and I had no reason to suspect they were actually working with aluminum. The jewelry they made was quite nice as well. I nearly bought myself a thick $30 pure-silver ring but alas it was slightly too small for my finger. Didn’t stop them from pestering me the remaining 10 minutes I was in the store, but I get it. In the end Kyle did buy himself a kick-ass silver ring. We got back in the boat and took off to see the next.
Full disclosure this photo is from Wikipedia page about the Kayan people. I personally don’t feel right taking pictures of people whose culture includes these sort of practices, not because I condemn or anything but more because it feels too “human zoo” and exploitative in nature to me. The ladies who sported these neck rings seemed proud of their culture, and they explained that historically they originated as a defense against tigers because those always go for the kill at the neck. Men never wore them because men carried spears or swords, which women would not. Nowadays it’s really just a traditionalist carry-over. Thankfully this wasn’t the primary part of this stop. They really wanted us to buy handmade handbags of various colors that were woven by the Kayan women. I nearly bought one, but my entire group was ready to go and I had to rush back to the boat.
The third was the cigar-making facility. We got to see the entire creative process. Take a tobacco leaf, cover it in some sort of paste (I really don’t know what it was, possibly quicklime), sprinkle in dried tobacco and spices, roll, cut, and you got yourself a cigar. They were strong! I took a puff of all three flavors and they were too much for me. They had sweet – made with star anise – banana – made with banana – and strong – made with more potent tobacco. I asked why it was only women doing the rolling and I believe their reasoning was finger dexterity; while the ladies inside made tobacco, the men outside were actually carving boats. Some of us did buy the cigars, and I nearly bought one to indulge but they had a very strict “buy 25 cigars or more” policy, and so I chose not to.
Our final stop was rather far down the lake at a place very similar to the one above. There they made scarves out of silk and the very tiny fibers that one can pull out of lotus stalks. Wild to think about. Takes something like 1000 lotus plants to make a single scarf, and the process is very laborious. Makes sense then that the scarves cost more than $100 each. Again, I nearly bought one, but they prefer not to use any dyes and so none of the scarves caught my eye.
Along Inle Lake are countless scenes like the above photo or the one just before it. Small shacks on stilts sitting on marshy land. Small shacks sitting in shallow water. Large complexes in the middle of the lake, some of them luxury $30 a night resorts! It was all very interesting to experience as the final event after having just hiked for three days through dry mountains.
Beyond the houses you have open water surrounded by rolling green mountains as far as the eye can see. Some of those hills have monasteries on them, but for the most part the area around the lake is fairly untouched while the lake itself is favored. It took us about an hour by boat to get from the lotus scarves shop to the town at the northern end of the lake. That ride was very unpleasant. The shape of the boats are fine for the driver because they sit at the back. And for those at the very front the keel keeps the water to the sides. But for anyone behind that first 25% of the boat, and ahead of the last 25% of the boat, welcome to a perpetual cold shower. The entire hour back I was pelted by droplets of lake water that left me shivering. It was a chance to think back on my time trekking through mountains and develop a real appreciation for everything I had seen or done. Most of all, I learned to appreciate the fact that I had done it during the dry season.
Thought you’d get out of this article without me mentioning salad, did you? You thought wrong! While we did have more tea-leaf salad in the last place we ate lunch, the real salad star of the entire trip was the above in Nyaungshwe, the drop off point at the end of the trip. After the trip was all done and over me, Kyle, and Emilie checked into our hostel for the night. Then we wandered out for food and a very minimalist pizza shop caught our eye. What did they have on the menu? Why, tea-leaf salad pizza, of course. It was good. Like a slightly sour spinach pizza. I’d had a friend recommend I give it a try even back in Bagan and here I had the chance to try it, so I took it. No regrets!
Kyle, Francisco, and Me. Ah the glorious memories! We walked about 60km over several mountains. We had food made by exotic cultures. We taught monk children to read. We swam with water buffalo. I was a little nervous when the trip first began as we walked out of Kalaw into the mountains, worried that I wouldn’t have the stamina for it. But I had so much fun I barely even noticed I was doing something so physical. That trek was probably the best part of Myanmar for me and I’d happily agree to go back and chill out in that part of the country again for weeks at a time. My time in Shan State was over, but I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.