Preface:

I’d read of people doing 3 day, 60 km hikes on their way to Inle lake. Starting in the small town of Kalaw, the trek was run by a number of different companies, and took you along mountain ridge lines, across arrid farm land, and finally down into the marshy wet lands of Inle Lake. I decided to split this hike into three sections. Below is section 1.

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I get jolted awake by the bus driver. I look up to see the bus driver grabbing my arm.”Kalaw” he says. In my barely conscious of state, I knew enough that that was the stop I needed. Completely on auto-pilot, I hop off, the driver throws me my pack from the holds under the bus, the doors close, and the bus takes off. I wondered why my alarm I’d set for 5 am, an hour before our ETA, hadn’t gone off. I look up and down the road. I realise I was the only one who got off the bus. Then it sinks in, “This is way to dark for 5/6am…”. I look down at my watch. Half 2 in the morning.

Great.

That time stuck with me. Coming to somewhere like Burma, whose only truly opened it’s border’s to travelers in the last handful of years, I did more than what one would consider a reasonably sane level of research, I’d heard time and again of people who did the hike from Kalwa to Inle Lake ending up dropped off on the side of the road at 2 or 3 in the morning. My plan was I’d take the last bus from Mandalay, sleep the whole way, then arrive in Kalaw at dawn. I double checked with the bus company on the ETA, they assured me leaving at 10 pm, I’d arrive at 6 am, and it’d line up perfectly with the hike I was taking at 8… in fact I was worried it’d arrive late and I’d be cutting it too close. A fact I was quickly realizing I wasn’t going to have to worry about. Mice and Men and all that I guess.

I decide to try and find a hotel, I pull on the doors of a few. Locked. I walk a little further up. Same results. Some time goes by when a bus blew past me stopping 100 yards ahead. I see a bunch of people get off down the road. I hear speaking. It’s a crowd. I can hear English. British accents, American accents. I get closer and they have the same deer-in-the-headlights look that I had. I hear a South England accent yell out “It’s 3 in the ***ing morning!”.

I decide it’s time to make some friends.

I go up and introduce my self, As if almost on cue, the sound of all the people attracted a bunch of locals out of thin air, all asking if we needed a hotel giving us business cards. We look for the best price, find a place, then hike into town a little ways right along the outskirts looking of it.

After waking up the owner, we get a room. 20 bucks a night for a four person room. One look at the room and I reconsidered sleeping on the street… but it was warm in here,… well, warmer.

I throw my hood up, put on a winter hat and tried not to think of all the different stains everywhere… I had 3 hours before I had to get up and find the hiking company’s office in town.

Early Rise. Early Shine.

It felt like all I did was blink and the sun was peaking over the mountains. I could hear chanting again coming from town through the windows. This was turning into a lovely way to be woken up each day. I leave a few bills covering more than my share of the room, thanking the few from the group that were awake for letting me crash with them and I head out into town.

I went with A1 hiking. The owner was great and explained everything clearly to us, cost, route, what we’d see etc. As he’s giving me the run down on last minute details, A few others join, two girls from Poland, and a Journalist from the UK.

As we wait for the official start, I wander around town and buy some supplies. A few bottles of water, some oranges, paper towel. Anything that I thought would be good to have, in-case I didn’t come across any more of it for the next three days. Not long after, we headed off.

Welcome to the Jungle

We started off day 1 walking straight out of town into the surrounding jungle along dirt roads, which turned into paths, which eventually turned into worn grass. We stopped a few times for our guide to point out vegetation, huge bugs and small lizards. After seeing papaya and avocado, we got the idea to pick some for lunch and dinner that night.

Three hours after setting out, we came to the foot of a mountain. We hiked up it, all of us second guessing why we decided to do this, until we got to the top and saw the view across. A little further down the ridge line, we came up on our first stop for lunch.

Lunch was a spread of fresh avacado and nahn bread with a handful of different pastes to dip into. It was incredibly refreshing especially with the view that we had.

An hour for lunch, and we were back on the trail. We walked further along the ridge line through the jungle unti looping along the sides of the mountain. Not long after, we came across a small village.

A quick tea stop on the far side of the village, followed by a decent down the mountain, The rest of the afternoon was an easy pace of following a rail line hoping across rice paddy fields.

Twenty four kilometers from starting out, we finally came up on our place for the night. We were staying with a Burmese family; A Grandmother, a Mother and her infant son.
As we walked through their gate, the mother was slicing wheat on a scythe with her son tied to her back in an arrangement of tightly wrapped fabric. All it took was one sight of us and he just lit up smiling, laughing and yelling.

That night, the family served us spread of vegetables and eggs all spun together with different spices in different bowls. Our guide came out at the end with fresh guacamole he made from the avocados we’d picked that morning. It was all incredibly delicious.

We sat there eating and drinking as the sun went down. As the light faded, we could see patches of flames from farmers clearing their land along the mountains on either side of the small valley we were in.

Not long after the sun was down, so were we. That was day 1.

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As always, you can find the rest of the pictures over at  .