Maritime Allures on Solid Ground: On Land Too Inle Lake Can Charm You

Tibor Krausz

So we've done Inle Lake. We've visited the latter-day Atlantis of waterborne Intha villages. We've witnessed the local fishermen stand astern in their flat-bottomed boats and paddle famously with adroit sidekicks of their legs. We've seen the famed jumping cats leap through hoops for their monk trainers in a floating monastery. We've feasted on a delicious dinner of bass and shrimp aboard a sampan restaurant lying at anchor.

What now?

This is the challenge that faces Steve, a Canadian friend, and me after two thrilling days afloat in pirogues, canoes and dugouts with another day still left to spend at Inle Lake -- preferably on solid ground this time. We don't have to ponder long. A roadside convenience kiosk offers bicycles for rent, and before we have to moan "What now?" again, off we pedal on two antique black grandma bikes.

Guess what: the lake proves to be just as fascinating on land as it did on water.

We leave the main road winding out of town and rattle on muddy dirt tracks along the shore, then uphill. We pass lumbering bullock carts, their axles creaking, their frames shuddering under mountains of produce, their wobbly wheels pitching dangerously in the potholes. Prowling supine on his payload bale of dried grass, a driver is taking a midmorning nap, allowing his bullocks to chart their own course toward the destination on autopilot.

We catch up with several boys astride ponderous water buffalos on their way to a stream of muddy water, there to indulge their beasts in their daily mud bath. Chattering excitedly at the rare sight of two Westerners, the young cowherds beckon us to join them. Presently, the buffalos are down on their knees or lying on their flanks, wallowing contentedly neck-deep in muck with the boys leaping and somersaulting off their backs into the stream.

"You! You!" they invite us. Taking a belly-flop off a longsuffering buffalo does seem like jolly good fun, but being rather prissy about appearances we give it a pass. Not so buffalo-back riding. I clamber astride a particularly placid-looking specimen and off I ride.

That is to say, there I sit on the fellow while he is masticating in absent-minded reverie and refusing to budge. There must be some sort of sedative in the reeds he's just been sampling, for he appears curiously like an opium addict in a stupor. Try as I might to make the lackadaisical fellow get a move on, nothing going. Water buffalos, it turns out, are stiff-necked creatures. And what with those forbidding horns of my mount hovering meaningfully in front of my eyes, I think it wise not to provoke the chap too much.

The boys, all expert jockeys born and bred, find my ineptitude rather hilarious. I can see their point: in several townships across Myanmar, locals indulge in regular water buffalo races, and how would I measure up to even the slowest of competitors?

Boy, am I fast in getting back on my bike, though!

We tread on the pedals in axle-deep sludge and mud that sucks at our tires like quicksand, our thighs aching as if after a long session at the Stair Master. But that's not by way of complaints: Steve and I have it easy. In a picturesque patchwork of paddies sprinkled with tumbledown ruins of old Shan baked-brick pagodas, Burmese men and women in broad straw hats are tending to rice shoots, their longyis hitched up to their thighs as they wade through leech-infested water.

I have been witness countless times to rice being cultivated, yet I cannot help marveling at the resilience of these farmers. Exposed to desiccating heat and saturating wet, parching sun rays and drenching rains, they labor tirelessly away day in, day out in their backbreaking toil. A potato eater by nature, I used to consider rice a rather pedestrian foodstuff. No more. A mere glimpse at the sweat-soaking human grind that goes into producing it, and I'm filled with renewed respect for the tenacity of farmers -- as well as with a measure of grateful discomfiture at my own pampered existence. Make no mistake: Inle's farmers work just as indefatigably as its fishermen. The rich soils of lakeside lands and the ready access to plenty of water make this one of Myanmar's rice baskets.

In hillside Pa-O villages, a gaggle of boisterous ragamuffins swarm up to keep us company. A wizened elder, carrying a toddler (perhaps his great-grandson) in an embroidered shoulder sling, is puffing on a pipe elongated and gnarled like a wizard's shaft. Perhaps in odd moments the pipe does double as a wizard's shaft. After all, this is a magical place where irascible spirits guard their arboreal haunts jealously and strike down any foolhardy woodcutter who dares raise an axe in their favorite woods. Mischievous pixies, too, are reported to lurk in the forests, hoodwinking unwary passersby into taking wrong forest turns.

They might have pulled a fast one on us too: before long we have no idea where we're headed. Rather, we do know that we are heading to the Ta-Eh Gu cave and a neighboring monastery of reclusive forest monks. But that's just in theory: without a guide and a proper map that hoped-for destination seems more and more elusive by the minute. By the look of things we aren't even remotely close to the cave. Yet therein lies the magic of trekking in Myanmar: miss an intended sight, and likely as not you'll end up somewhere intriguing anyway.

In our case it's a peculiar gnarled old banyan tree with matted snake-heaps of aerial roots. It looks, I swear, like Tree Beard from The Lord of the Rings. Its drooping elephantine limbs ooze with massive cascades of jasmine garlands and gaudy ribbons accumulated over time by pious locals plying the forest trail. The lower branches drip with defunct fairy lights, once powered by an old car battery perhaps during a Midsummer Night style dance. Miscellaneous buddha figurines have been stuck in the tree's weather-worn orifices and the nooks and crannies of its rutted bark. Fresh offerings of delicacies and beverages scent the air invitingly. The resident spirits may come for their share of the votive victuals, but myriad hungry insects have already beaten them to the feast.

Then I notice him. Standing erect near the tree, like the wax effigy of an ancient holy monk, is a barefoot sinewy old man in a coffee-brown toga. He has large rectangular plastic-framed grandpa spectacles and a forked cobra-tongue goatee. He wears a shiny black Pharaoh headdress the shape of a large carp sucking on his head with its tail fin pointing skyward; he clutches a long twig cane with a knobby top resembling the head of a dog, or perhaps an emaciated horse. He's fixing us with his gaze in expectant bewilderment as if we were the personifications of Shwe Phyin Gyi and Shwe Phyin Galay -- sons of a lotus-eating ogress and two of Burma's 37 hallowed nats (spirits) -- and he were waiting for us to reveal our mysterious purpose.

I greet him, but he just keeps on staring -- not threateningly, just bemusedly. The ascetic recluse displays that rare human quality we find so appealing in our favorite comedians: a personality inviting giggles by mere appearance. Then I realize he looks like the Burmese twin of the late George Burns. We potter around, investigating, but the old man doesn't even twitch an eyebrow. Is he a wax figure after all? No. When I invite him for a sip from my water bottle, the holy man accepts -- without a word. Perhaps he has sworn a vow of silence.

Circling back towards Inle Lake, we encounter a party of young men heading for a nat pwe (spirit festival) in town. Some banging pots and kitchen utensils, some clapping and ululating, they are shaman-dancing down the track. Two of them wear Halloween rubber masks of blue gorillas, several have their faces war-painted, and a tubby chap in a pith helmet is brandishing a wooden sword. I believe they're busy chasing evil spirits away from the forthcoming festivities.

Shwe Yaunghwe Kyaung is a wooden monastery with tiered roofs standing on chunky stilts. Its large oval-shaped windows are said to be highly idiosyncratic architecturally; in almost every window sits a young monk in his magenta robes, relaxing in between sessions of study and meditation and gazing impassively out at the hustle and bustle of life on the road outside the tranquil, venerated grounds of their sanctuary. In the airy ordination hall, elder monks are poring over sacred Pali texts, perhaps finding verses of particular relevance in which to edify novices in the upcoming afternoon study session.

Back on the road, we draw near three young girls carrying stacks of dry twigs on their heads for their families' cooking fire. At the sight of us, they giggle and call out to us: "I love you! I love you!" With their gay girlish laughter trailing us, rejuvenated we make a beeline for yet uncharted lakeside hills, where no doubt new wonders await.