Advertisement
Published: November 16th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Win Bo and our driver collect us at the civilised time of 745am for the 20 minute drive to Nyaung U airport for our flight to Heho (pronounced “Hur-ho”) which is the nearest airport to Inle Lake. The airport exterior is designed to look like a temple. Inside everyone mills around the “all flights check in” desk. A man cursorily weighs our bags and then sticks two tags on them before wandering off with them. We are given a red sticker to put on our shirts to show where we are going, and then herded into the departure area with all the other passengers. The X-ray machine picks up three of the four bottles of water in Sara's carry on. “You leave on table please not allowed”. Sara: “OK” and unloads three of the four bottles as requested.. David: “Can I take them back to drink while we wait?” Security officer: “Yes no problem”........
Each flight is announced in Burmese. All passengers surge forward and show their stickers. “Not yet you wait”......eventually the red stickers are allowed onto a bus. We trundle to the ATR-72 turboprop which seems to be the plane of choice for internal flights. There is more
leg room than on BA and we get a rather nice pain au raisin and a glass of Sprite. BA loses again!
Arriving in Heho we walk from the plane to the terminal, just like you could in the old days. Inside we have to show our passports at immigration. Why? Is it some residual security measure from the troubled times when the Shan were fighting the Burmese army? Anyway that done we meet the guide and are off to see the Pindaya cave, about an hour away. The Shan hills are pleasantly rolling, about 4000ft above sea level and with deep red earth and patterned fields growing different crops of beans, nuts, bananas, sesame seeds and sunflowers. In some places electricity cables are being laid, on pylons like the old fashioned telegraph poles, very modest things. Suddenly it rains! First rain we have seen....
As we approached Pindaya we were initially thinking “Not another cave with Buddhas” but this one is different. It is Buddha's holiday (again) so there are lots of kids on their day off school, and pilgrims, and lots of local tribal people, but it is surprisingly not too crowded. The cave itself has
over 10,000 gold Buddhas of varying sizes in it, all higgledy piggledy in a series of natural caves with stalactites and stalagmites dripping water. There is a fairy grotto with a ladder for the convenience of the ghost of a long dead prince should he wish to visit the cave, as he often does apparently, and a hole down to a cave system, by which you can supposedly travel underground to Bagan. A young monk went down there once and never came back, so no one has bothered since.
We forego the chance to visit the second cave as it’s up and down a long staircase, and “no statues only for meditation” our guide tells us. We stop for a quick lunch before the drive to Inle Lake. We’re told over a million people live around the lake, which seems surprising, when everywhere seems to be a village or a very modestly sized town, the people seem to be swallowed up by the lake and the countryside.
We stop at the Shwe Yan Pyay monastery, where a couple are having their wedding photos taken as they stand in a window resplendently clad in yellow. Inside, the monks are
going about their business. Next to the monastery is a small pagoda with tiny niches cut into all its walls, each one complete with a small Buddha statue and a plaque naming the donor, a surprising number of whom are from overseas.
The last town before our hotel is Nyaung Shwe. It seems a laid back sort of place with backpackers staying there, and lots of sweaty foreigners on bicycles making their late afternoon way back to their lodgings, many showing the bright red skin of those who did not cover up or use enough suncream.
Our villa at the hotel has a rather nice view onto the lake, or rather onto some trees and then onto one of the little lagoons that fringe the lake proper. Time for an early cocktail!
Scroll down for more photos.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.385s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 20; qc: 105; dbt: 0.1362s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb