The mygola blog

‘This is Burma’, coined Kipling. ‘It is quite unlike any place you know about’, he writes soon after. This South East Asian country is nothing like Malaysia, Thailand, or any other turquoise hued paradise. Myanmar remains worlds apart. 4000 sacred stupas dusted all over the planes of Bagan is more definitive. There is a “golden” rock teetering with magical impossibility upon the edge of a chasm. The women are smothered in thanaka and grannies chew betel leaf by the sack-full. And we have not yet left the airport!

The monks teach their cats to jump and trading jokes with monarchs who prefer to move their capitals based on the whims of fortune tellers seem like viable pass-times. Indeed, this is Burma. A place where real-gold buddhas are still bathed every single day upon the first light.

The author has forever connected to the country in images of sultry heat, temples and of course, his muse, thwarted love.

Asia } Myanmar/Burma } Nov 2010 (Source: travelmeasia)

The mornings are routine. The usual haze, a muted noise of traffic rising from amidst dark foliage like the hot after-shower fumes. Men and women wear the same Burmese sarong and monks (it is wagered that every male in Burma is a monk at one time of his life or the other) carrying alms bowls ease through streets teeming with battered cars and rampaging rickshaws with the solemn tranquility that’s characterized with the religion. But post the alms ritual, all is not always serious.

Monks can have fun too! (Source: antwerpenR)

Mandalay and Horses named Dolay

Mandalay gives a glimpse of the complexity that is Burma; leftovers of a British Empire, Buddhism, an ethnic melting pot and a long line of endemic monarchs.  An hour’s drive from Mandalay is a ferry river crossing over the Irrawaddy. Across the waters, the path continues and quite naturally, so does the journey. But this time on horse-drawn carts. It is customary for Burmese horse masters to give their steeds names like Dolay (aye, the Burmese nickname for Cristiano Ronaldo). The EPL is a religion here. After a dusty ride over hard-caked mud roads, its Ava. But very little remains of what was once Burma’s greatest capital.

The Horse Car (Source: DamienHR)

While the red-brick ornate entrances still stand, and so does an off hand watchtower, the rest are ruins. But if Ayutthaya brings in throngs of visitors, Ava is just beginning to wake to the wonders of global tourism.

A monastery not far away gleams in centuries old teak. The engravings are dusty but the intricacy still shows even though the boards underneath the foot creak. One hall of the monastery now sports a blackboard, a few posters and many desks. Children with snotty noses sit at them. Pali, the language of ancient Buddhist scriptures is taught alongside English and Mathematics.  But the monks (yes, there is a flurry of saffron here too) know how to have fun too. A common scene is to find say 50 odd monks of all ages and varying degrees of baldness gather in a tea shop to watch Manchester United play off New Castle.

Inle Lake and Wayne Rooney

Scenes from a great human march comes to mind (pick any instance, God knows there have been many) when the flat land stretching from Mandalay to Inle Lake is seen from above.  There’s no electricity, agriculture still fuels the slim pulse of economy and temples threaten to outnumber huts. But nothing takes away the stunning beauty of the the lake and the villages that it waters.

Inle Lake - Leg Rowers, Myanmar (Source: yeowatzup)

Inle sits in the very heart of Burma; both the land and of its people. Here live the Shan folk. The aboriginals. However, the water seduces other tribes to trickle through (not that the Shan people are too thrilled about it). Particularly, the Intha and Pa-O. The Intha homes are huts still made of bamboo inter-weaved with a strong variety of wild grass.

Peering into one of these huts, cheroots can be seen rolled from homegrown tobacco – harvested in the mountains not too far. There are many who sit as a part of this eclectic group of tobacco rollers. A wrinkled old sweet lady picks one from the made bunches amidst common (but good natured) uproar and lights it. Not long after,  an equally wrinkled and sweet old man speaks up in something that most assuredly has to be a Burmese dialect. It does not take too long to realize though, that the seemingly foreign phrase was actually the name of a particularly popular Englishman by the name of Wayne Rooney.

old woman w cheroot (Source: daniel n. reid)

A twin village across the lake gears up early in the day. It’s time for the weekly market. More tribes, mountain dwellers this time, trek down with heavy baskets full of lemon, avocados and many other fruits which I cannot name. Inle, and specially this weekly market serves as a very good introduction to just how heady the ethnic complexity of the land can be.

The Bagan Ruins and Peanuts

One look at Bagan and for all us Stephen King worshipers, a particular monologue comes to mind where a figure in black explains how, at the end of all things, it is size that defies us and not time. Lets say we throw in all those art galleries of Paris into a tiny island (and lets throw in a lot of Rome’s 900 churches for good measure) and it might start resembling, at least in number, what the Bagan looks like. It is a vast plain filled with temples that rival the Angkor in both history and pure exotic brilliance. There are as many as 4400 stupas here that are remnants from a period of over eight centuries.

Sunset over Bagan plain (Source: antwerpenR)

The good lady herself once decided that she was tired of looking out at the Duchy of Cornwall from her window and after a lot of sailing, she found herself in these elvish groves. The lady started off a lacqueware factory to foster the industry that lived here since the eleventh century. But that’s not the only forte of the local folk. Something to do with Peanuts is one too. Men balanced atop bamboo tripods winnow the nuts. An act of grace, I would say, specially compared to the more rustic manner of  yanking the peanut plants out of the soil and spanking them with flattened bamboo staffs before they can be winnowed. At one point of time, peanuts were exported (often cigar shaped boats doing the local transport) to China, India, Thailand and other nearby countries. Not far away, along the streets, women are seen selling them.

a bag of peanuts (Source: antwerpenR)

Cycling along the dusty paths and amidst a millenia of history, it comes out that although they seemed the same from afar, not all of the four thousand odd stupas are the same. While, most of them resemble oversized bells, there are a few scattered here and there that are quite curiously shaped. The heady humidity arises more out of the left bank, and it is easy to guess that beyond the dense green, is the Irrawaddy.

Inside some of these temples, and mainly inside the rather important Hteik Pann pagoda are eleventh century frescoes; of mystical dancers. The stances and the form uncannily link back to India. Amidst the cylindrical walls, time is fuzzy.

Burma is a land with some rare departures from the regular. It has long stayed in the shadows and many still wish it stays that way. While an increased influx of people will not solve its many problems, Myanmar holds a unique promise.

-Debnath

Asia } Myanmar/Burma } Nov 2010 (Source: travelmeasia)