KALAW

Kalaw was used by the British as a “hill-station” – somewhere at a bit of altitude to escape from the summer heat. It’s a pleasant town  - nothing special to see in the town, but it’s used as a base for hiking in the surrounding hills. After checking-in to our hotel we strolled into the centre to “Sam’s Trekking” to arrange a guided hike for the following day. As usual, absolutely no difficulties in making the arrangements so we spent the rest of the afternoon pottering about – spending a bit of time in an internet café, a couple of beers and so on.

That evening we had dinner in a restaurant near our hotel – split up into a series of smallish dining rooms. In one was a party of americans who turned out to be from Alabama. I’m not sure exactly why, but I found that very surprising.

Next day, bright and early, we presented ourselves back at Sam’s Trekking and met our guide for the day who turned out to be a young girl who was studying geography at a university in Taunggyi, a couple of hours away. We may have misunderstood – her English, although better than our Burmese, was limited – but we thought she said that her course was over four years, but only for two months each year, so that the facilities can cope with the number of students by teaching them in rotation.

Anyway, she knew the complex network of trails well – we would have quickly got hopelessly lost without a guide – and led us through narrow wooded valleys with neat vegetable and herb gardens wherever space permitted.

There was a lot of activity going on and she explained that the following day was a big market day in Kalaw and people were getting their produce ready to take there. The thing was that the trails we were on were the only routes through those hills so the farmers were going to have to carry everything themselves. We saw a group doing just that later in the afternoon – men and women carrying impossibly large bundles up and down steep tracks.  They don’t seem to have donkeys – we haven’t seen a single one in Myanmar – I wonder why not?

After about three and a half hours – largely uphill – we emerged onto a high ridge with spectacular views over the surrounding countryside, with an ideally placed “restaurant” – a bit rustic, little more than a collection of shacks with a few tables shaded by thatch parasols. The food was a sort of indian veggie set lunch – chappatis, lentil soup and a light veg curry. Along with a couple of cold drinks it was a very welcome stop.

........but shame about the colour clash.........

After resting for about an hour we set off again, passing through an area of newly planted tea bushes. The next stop was a small remote village where our guide had a brief conversation with a man outside his house and we were invited in for tea. It was built on stilts – a single room about 20 feet by 40 feet, with virtually no furniture. We sat on mats on the floor and we could see that about about 1/3 of the space along the entire length was slightly raised as a sleeping area. As we had tea – probably the best tea of our entire trip – we were told that two unrelated families shared the space, one couple with four children and another couple with one child. And we could see that there were two separate open hearths for cooking etc. There was virtually nothing in the way of possessions – a few bits of cooking equipment and some clothes in plastic bags. And framed photos of Aung Sang Suu Kyi and father on one wall. The two men were at home with four of the children and they were very friendly and welcoming. Fortunately, I had a tube of polo mints in my pocket which went down well with the kids.

After tea we set off heading back to Kalaw – and it was a long, quite hard afternoon – up and down through the hills as it got hotter.  We finally arrived back at around 5.30 pm so excluding the stops we had been hiking for about seven and a half hours. A cold beer was very welcome but we were too tired to bother with dinner. Later that evening we shared a huge bowl of vegetable soup at the hotel – it gave us about three portions each. We wolfed it – must have been the need to replace the liquid and salt we sweated out during the day.