Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 12

Traditional wood carvings at a workshop in Mandalay.

 

Our Ayeywarwaddy cruise ended with a short 11-kilometer boat ride from Mingun to Mandalay, followed by a half-day tour of the city that included handcraft shops, sculpting workshops and Mahamuni Pagoda. The pagoda was lively with activity, with many families participating in ceremonies to have their sons ordained as Buddhist monks.

 

Thandar Khine (she’s the one in the middle) poses with some rather large marionettes.

 

Women create an embroidered tapestry at a workshop in Mandalay. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

A sculptor works on a Buddha image.

 

A sculptor puts the finishing touches on a Buddha statue.

 

A young boy participates in an ordination procession at Mahamuni Pagoda in Mandalay.

 

A child is dressed up for an ordination ceremony at Mahamuni Pagoda.

 

Costumed children stand in line as they take part in an ordination procession. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 11

Mingun Pagoda.

 

Our last overnight stop before our arrival in Mandalay was Mingun, home to a giant pagoda whose construction was started by King Bowdawpaya in 1790 but was never finished. Had it been completed, the planned 150-meter-high structure would have been the biggest pagoda in the world.

 

A raft carries ceramic pots downriver from Kyauk Myaung, which we had visited on day four.

 

The view from the RV Paukan 2007 pilot house.

 

The ruins of a giant guardian chinthe (mythical lion-like creatures) near Mingun Pagoda.

 

Visitors walk up the stairs to the top of Mingun Pagoda. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Looking south toward Mandalay from the top of Mingun Pagoda.

 

The view north from Mingun Pagoda, with Hsinbyume Myatheindan Pagoda in the foreground.

 

Hsinbyume Myatheindan Pagoda.

 

Hanging out at Hsinbyume Myatheindan Pagoda.

 

Buddhist nuns ride in a bullock cart near Mingun Pagoda.

 

Traditional Burmese dancers perform on the beach along the river near Mingun Pagoda.

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 10

 

Elephant bathing time.

 

The main event of the day was a stop at an elephant camp near Katha, where the animals worked hauling logs out of the forest to be loaded onto boats and taken downriver.

 

The grizzled road to the elephant camp.

 

Elephant master (ozi).

 

A young ozi.

 

An elephant and his ozi. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Scrubbing the pachyderms.

 

A row of elephant butts. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

The elephants return to the forest from whence they came. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 9

Children play on a swing on Kyun Taw Island.

 

On day nine we started the anticlimactic return trip to Mandalay, traveling much faster now that we were going with the flow of the river. We passed back through the second defile and just before midday stopped at the mid-river Kyun Taw Island, home to a small village and an atmospheric pagoda.

 

A traditional house on Kyun Taw Island. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

Kyun Taw Pagoda.

 

Kyun Taw Pagoda. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Ceiling details inside a monastery near Kyun Taw Pagoda. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Passing rain showers in the afternoon brought rainbows to the Ayeyarwaddy River. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 8

Motoring through the second defile of the Ayeywarwaddy River. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

We started the day with a quick excursion into the town of Shwegu before sailing through the middle (second) defile of the Ayeyarwaddy River. This one is the most spectacular of the three, with jungle-covered cliffs soaring above the waterway on either side: Isolated pagodas cling to the steep rock walls, waterfalls cascade from the heights, monkeys chatter in the trees. Beyond this lay the town of Bhamo in Kachin State, the northernmost point of our trip, which we reached in the late afternoon.

 

We’ve all heard of the Cat in the Hat. His cousin, the Cat on the Hat, lives in Shwegu.

 

Another bamboo raft, with the wood sellers living aboard in temporary huts, floats from Bhamo to Bagan. With the river flowing at 2mph, and with safe travel possible only during daylight hours, the trip takes about 12 days.

 

The southernmost reaches of the Ayeyarwaddy’s second defile. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

A high, mossy waterfall in the second defile.

 

A kid with a toy gun pulls his brother across a road in Bhamo.

 

Yunnan Chinese Temple in Bhamo.

 

Spices for sale at Bhamo’s riverside market.

 

Fried snacks at the Bhamo market.

 

The end of another day in Bhamo.

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.

 

 

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 5

The last remnants of morning fog give way to clear skies.

Our boat got underway about an hour late due to heavy fog on the river, but once the mist cleared, the weather stayed beautiful all day long. We passed through the southernmost of the Ayeyarwaddy’s three defiles, where the channel was narrow and the water 35-37 meters deep.

As the boat cruised northward, escorted by a large phalanx of dragonflies, the scenery became increasingly spectacular: bigger hills, narrower river, dozens of creeks flowing into the main waterway. By noon we had passed through the defile, and the river became wide and sluggish once again. To the west, green hills jutted from the water’s edge; to the east, flat farmland was framed on the horizon by mountains soaring up into the clouds. Straight ahead lay a vast expanse of muddy water peppered with ever-shifting,and potentially dangerous, sandbars.

In the afternoon we stopped at Kya Hnyat. Upon approaching the big sandbar near the village, we were greeted by a welcoming committee of dozens of boys, most of them buck naked, doing somersaults across the sand as they sped their way toward the boat – it looked like we had stumbled upon a nudist colony for hyperactive kids.

Reaching the town proper required crossing a narrow metal walkway from the boat to the sandbar, walking across the beach, boarding local boats to cross another narrow rivulet, and then climbing a long set of stone steps up to the village. We walked through the town market; stopped by a school where the kids, in accordance with state-approved teaching methods, were shouting lessons in unison like robots; visited a small private museum of Pyu-era artifacts from which the government had pilfered most of the best pieces for display in the National Museum in Yangon; and ended the tour at a Buddhist monastery where the head monk provided school lessons for about 20 kids from outlying villages.

The tour completed, we made it back to the boat in time to enjoy the best sunset of the trip (up to that point) from the top deck.

 

A local boat takes a narrow, shore-hugging channel to avoid the dangerous mid-river currents and sandbars.

 

A convoy of boats approaches the southernmost of the Ayeyarwaddy’s three narrow defiles. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Workmen make repairs on a riverside pagoda at Kya Hnyat village.

 

The naked welcome committee shows off a critter they dug from the sand. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Some of the kids who met us on the beach were wearing clothes. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Red chilies dry in the sun at Kya Hnyat market.

 

Young monks clean the yard at a monastery in Kya Hnyat. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Sunset on the Ayeyarwaddy River, part one.

 

Sunset on the Ayeyarwaddy River, part two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ayeyarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 4

Mountainous terrain started appearing on the horizon once we passed north of Mandalay.

The morning dawned bright and clear: The rain of the first three days had finally stopped, and the sun was back in its rightful place in the sky. Early in the morning we left the Mandalay area behind and started cruising into the remote reaches of upper Myanmar, where the hills became higher and more frequent. There’s nothing better than sitting on the top deck of a boat on a cool, sunny morning while sipping coffee and watching the incredible landscape glide by.

Our main stop for the day occurred at Kyauk Myaung. This was another pottery village, but it was much bigger than Yandabo, which we had visited on day two. Kyauk Myaung specializes in the production of huge glazed Martaban jars, which are sold throughout the country and are used to hold water, rice and cooking oil.

 

Lone pagodas, apparently in the middle of nowhere, are a common sight along the river.

 

A large bamboo raft drifts in the middle of the river. Entrepreneurs cut bamboo in the northern reaches of the river, float it downstream, and sell it in places like Bagan where wood is scarce.

 

A young girl in Kyauk Myaung village wears the traditional cosmetic thanakha, which is made from tree bark and is used to cool the skin and block the sun’s rays.

 

A woman decorates a clay pot in Kyauk Myaung. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Decorative details on a clay pot. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Pots await firing in a huge kiln. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

A villager rolls Martaban jars onto a bullock cart for transport to the riverside, where they are loaded onto boats and shipped to towns up and down the Ayeyarwaddy.

 

A bullock cart carries Martaban jars to the riverside.

 

A villager performs a task that, were I to try it, would probably shatter my spine.

 

Martaban jars are piled along the river, ready to be loaded onto boats. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

A riverside pagoda glows in the afternoon sunlight.

 

 

 

 

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 3

Dogs guard their dirt pile kingdom along the east bank of the Ayeyarwaddy River.

Another rainy day: The passengers who had come from Germany seemed disappointed that the countryside was not drenched at all times in tropical sunshine.

Our boat didn’t travel very far on the Ayeyarwaddy River on this day – only about two hours total. Instead, we spent most of the time making land excursion to areas just outside the city of Mandalay: the ancient capital Inwa (Ava) in the morning, the hilly, monastery-studded town of Sagaing midday; and the traditional handicrafts town of Amarapura in the afternoon.

 

Bicyclists and pony carts negotiate the muddy tracks around Inwa, an area that served as the capital of Burmese kingdoms on four different occasions from the 14th to 19th centuries.

 

A Buddha image weathers the elements at Inwa. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Once-mighty Inwa now consists of vast tracts of farmland peppered with ancient pagodas and monasteries. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Peacock motifs abound at Inwa’s Bagaya Kyaung, a teak monastery built in 1834.

 

Mist drifts through the hills of Sagaing, home to dozens of pagodas and monasteries.

 

Buddhist nuns and volunteers wash dishes following a donation ceremony at Saya Theingi Kyaung nunnery in Sagaing.

 

A donor greets the 93-year-old head nun at Saya Theingi Kyaung in Sagaing.

 

Donors visit Saya Theingi Kyaung nunnery in Sagaing. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Spools of blue thread feed into manual looms at a longyi-weaving factory in Amarapura.

 

A fisherman walks across Taungthaman Lake at Amarapura.

 

A boatman rows across Taungthaman Lake, with 1300-meter U Bein Bridge in the background.

 

Local residents walk across U Bein Bridge.

 

The sun struggles to make an appearance at the end of another rainy day at U Bein Bridge.

 

 

Ayeywarwaddy River cruise photo essay: Day 2

For breakfast, a bowl of fresh mohinga made with noodles and fish broth.

The second day of our 12-day cruise dawned overcast and drizzly as the boat got underway from its overnight anchor spot. We passed the confluence of the Ayeyarwaddy and Chindwin rivers, continuing north as the river cut through steep, sandy banks on either side.

The landscape consisted of flat farmland where cows stood in small groups in the muddy fields. The villages we passed appeared as small collections of wood houses nestled among groves of tall trees, with small pagodas, usually white or gold, near the water and standing out against the verdant backdrop. The river traffic was light, consisting of local rowboats that hugged the shore, and the occasional barge barreling down the middle of the river carrying gravel or teak logs.

The main stop of the day was Yandabo village, famous as the site where a peace treaty was signed ending the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1826. A white monument marks the spot where the pact was made. Yandabo is also a known for its production of pottery, which is made from clay dug directly from the riverbank.

 

Clay pots glisten in the rain in Yandabo village.

 

A woman uses a mallet to put the finishing touches on pottery in Yandabo.

 

Traditional, manual methods are still used to turn pottery in Yandabo. (Photo: Thandar Khine)

 

Decorative details on pottery.

 

The walkways of Yandabo are paved with pottery shards.

 

A future pottery maker smiles (or not) for the camera.

 

A young girl takes her brother for a piggyback ride around the village.

 

Night descends over the Ayeyarwaddy River.