Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 7

Morning glow on the landscape of upper Myanmar.

The town of Katha is famous among readers of English literature as the setting for George Orwell’s novel Burmese Days (fictionalized in the book as the town of Kyauktada). Orwell himself, under his non-nom de plume Eric Blair, actually lived in Katha in 1926-1927 as part of the Indian Imperial Police force, and the British Club where he hung out (and which was featured in Burmese Days) can still be visited today.

I had visited Katha in 2004, along with a friend who was conducting research for a book on Orwell, and I had already seen the British Club during that trip. So on this trip, while the rest of our boat’s passengers went to see the sights, Thandar Khine and I took off on an excursion of a different sort: to track down her grandmother who lived on the outskirts of Katha and whom she had not seen since she was a small child. The story is told in the photos below.

 

Black skies and sunlight along the way to Katha.

 

The Katha riverfront.

 

When Thandar Khine and I disembarked from the boat, we headed for the nearest corner store to figure out where her grandmother’s house was located and how best to get there. The people in the shop (the two people on the right) were super-helpful.

 

The shop owners even volunteered to drive us to the grandmother’s house on their motor scooters and refused to take petrol money when we offered.

 

We got dropped off in a picturesque ethnic Kachin village on the outskirts of town.

 

Another local women we didn’t know came along and offered to walk us to the correct house, leading us over small wooden bridges …

 

… down shady lanes …

 

… and straight to the home of Thandar Khine’s grandmother, Daw Ja Lone Nang Htoo, for the long-overdue family reunion.