We make the journey from Nwaung Shwe to Mandalay in a mini bus/van, accompanied by four locals, a couple of students based in Singapore—an Italian and an Austrian—who are in Myanmar for their break(not sure what season that one would be!), and for a few hours, the remaining seats are empty. Our driver is a self-proclaimed race car driver, but we comfort ourselves with the notion that he has the fortune of having his steering wheel on the left—so at least he can SEE when he’s overtaking! Like our trip the previous day, it’s slow going on a lot of stretches, as we’re heading up into the mountains before dropping back onto the wide central plain of the country. Sometimes we’re in a caravan of ten overloaded trucks and passing is all but impossible(thankfully, we think to ourselves). The countryside is a tapestry of small fields, many of which are slowly being tilled for the impending planting season. The earth is turned into hulking masses of hardened clay, turning and iron laden red as we move further north and west. We drive by an actual bus that appears to have made some miscalculation and has landed head first in a field. An army of people stand by as an ancient truck with a towing cable and hook is readied to pull the vehicle back onto the road. My guess is that this will take a substantial part of the morning.
We take a sudden and unexpected break in a nameless town where we can use a toilet and buy some snacks—although we do neither this time. It turns out there is a caravan of vans from the same company headed to Mandalay, something we discover after three others stop at the same spot. The local women and girls are busy hawking whatever wares they can outside the snack place, but there are few takers.
A scant thirty minutes later we’ve stopped again in what turns out to be the town of Kalaw. Previously a hill refuge for the British due to its agreeable climate, it has now become a hub for beginning a 2-3 day trek down the mountain to Inle Lake, something we decided to forego as we’d imagined far more intense heat for the all day walks. A young couple from New Zealand joins the bus and we’re off with demon-like speed. The next part of the trip is the most serpentine and mountainous of all, and there is a steady stream of mostly crawling traffic. When we reach the valley, the road straightens and speed is the name of the game once again. Honking incessantly—the norm here—we tear down the potholed road, rolling and bumping around the bus. Suddenly we stop again, and our driver meets up with a colleague whose driving back to Inle Lake, and for reasons we neither understand or care about, they switch places, and we breathe a misguided sigh of relief, thinking things will slow down now. Not really! This driver is equally maniacal—albeit equally affable!
The lunch spot is a dismal spot with passable toilets way in the back of the compound under the tamarind trees, but the food definitely looks dodgy, and after checking around the kitchen area we give it a miss, just sucking down some more bottled water. From here on the drive becomes steadily more urban, even though we really have no clue as to the name of any place we’re coming through. One final stop when another van from the company appears to have phoned our driver, and shortly we have pulled over so he can help them with a flat tire. When we start to see the occasional English lettering/words, we know we’ve reached Mandalay. This is confirmed by the fact that there are actually road names, a particularly helpful feature in Mandalay, since this more predictable grid with numbered streets does help one navigate in the pandemonium. If you’ve read and are expecting anything like Kipling’s poem Mandalay, basically a sailor/soldier’s wistful recalling his good old times in the Far East, and his especially fond memories of the women, drink and lush green of the tropics, as he wanders the wet grey streets of London, then today’s Mandalay is going to take some getting used to.
In the best tradition of Asian cities, the assault of the senses is instant and full-blown. Traffic is chaotically but functionally swirling at each and every intersection, people are everywhere, dogs lie perilously close to traffic, bus touts yell over the constant noise and claxon of the stream of vehicles and smoke belching motorcycles. The air is thick with the dust of the dry season, the smells of cooking and garbage, but despite this chaotic scene, people wave and shout hello, children smile widely, many still relatively unused to seeing much in the way of Westerners.
Mandalay is the country’s second city, considered its cultural capital. Like Bago, it was a royal capital for a while. It is also home to Myanmar’s largest contingent of descendants of Chinese, as well as sizeable groups of Indians (descendants from those who were here during the British Raj) and Muslims.
The downtown area where we stay in a clearly rather new—possibly Japanese—hotel, is a mishmash of the usual street and sidewalk commerce as well as the occasionally recognizable small bank, endless rather tired looking eating establishments, hotels that vary from a sort of Communist prison block style to glass and steel. Like in Yangon, as the day heats up, so do the unpleasant smells of virtually open sewers. They’re essentially covered with concrete blocks, but plenty are broken, and walking on the sidewalk—when that’s possible, means walking over the sewerage and water canals. Not conducive to working up any kind of appetite!
There is purportedly quite a bit to see, so we head out to find something to eat and work out a plan to see as much as we can fit in during our 4 day stay.
For pictures around town click the link.
https://goo.gl/photos/Ls4goaZRnhLhFpxA6
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