In the Mountains of Myanmar

The rain was jamming me up. I had ridden in a packed pickup truck up the mountains for 6 hours, in the pouring rain, to get to a little mountain town called Nam hsan. My new friend, Dima, from Israel, and I, were going to walk for three days from Nam hsan back to Hsipaw. It was a marvelous plan, except for two minor details: all of our clothes were soaked (I had left mine on the line overnight, when the rain came), and our only map was a little treasure map drawn by a local for us. See below.

So our plan wasn’t exactly what one might call “solid,” but I was dying to get into the mountains, some how. When we got to Nam hsan, I was soaked from head to toe, and freezing. It was very, very cold up there in the mountains. The pickup truck had a tarp over the top, which didn’t do didly-squat, and I was sitting in the front row, getting slammed with the rain head-on.

I was, for some reason  totally fine with it at the time.  But when I got to the guesthouse, I realized I had been wearing my only dry clothes, and they were now wet as well. I was having doubts about the trek, to say the least. Generally, my rule is that I don’t hike in the rain. I simply don’t. I don’t enjoy it. But I couldn’t really just wait for the rain to pass, because  as per the theme of this trip, I’ve got limited days.

So I spent the night in Nam hsan eating hot noodle soup and participating, kind of, in an extremely tense dinner conversations with a German, Israeli  Italian, Aussie, and Dutch guy. You see, this Dutch guy, he thinks that the whole world is being ruled by an evil elite, and we are all being brainwashed, etc etc. That’s all fine and good, but when he starts talking about the Holocaust, and 9/11 being a conspiracy, and how Bush and Obama are Satan-lovers, and John Lennon was assassinated because he was starting to let on that he was hired by the ruling elite, things started getting uncomfortable. It was tolerable, until he announced that he’d be joining me and Dima on our trek the next day. Great. I can’t wait to hear about the “Illuminati” for another 3 days, and listen to him pronounce rice with ridiculous rolling R’s like “rrrrrrrrice.” It sounds like he’s arguing, even when he’s just asking for rice!

Well, the three of us left in the morning, and headed out in the rain, up the mountain. The treasure map we were following only listed towns that we would pass, where to eat lunch, and where to sleep. And everything was measured in hours. I spent the first 4 hours with Dima and Thomas, listening to non-stop theories about human consciousness and arguing about immigration and gun control. I learned from him that a woman being raped is actually the woman’s fault, because her spirit from a past life is attracting the rapist to her.  Imagine that!  Exhausting.  When we stopped in a village, I sucked down my noodles in less than a minute so that I could go off on my own and have some peace of mind.

“Well, I’ll see you guys later, I’m gonna go on my own from here. I’ll meet you at Ohm Tat!”

I headed off into the mist, alone, with nothing but two names in my head: Pan Ye Kan, and Ohm Tat. Pan Ye Kan was a village I would pass through to get to Ohm Tat. So I started walking, hoping to find some place called Ohm Tat.

The strategy here is to ask for directions every so often. It goes something like this:

“Min-guh-la-bah! Pan Ye Kan?” (pointing in a direction). The person then points, shakes their head yes or no, says some other words that I definitely can’t understand, and I decide whether or not I’m on the right track. “Jezu-bay!” I walk off into the unknown.

Ok, so, this had worked for the first 4 hours, but now, I was on my own, and I didn’t come across another person until I was an hour and a half from Mah Nuk, where we ate lunch. When I finally did, and I asked for Ohm Tat, the dude seemed like he had never heard of it.

“Ohm Sun?” he said, shaking his head.

“No, Ohm Tat,” I insisted. He wasn’t sure, but he pointed in some vague direction, still shaking his head “no.”

“Hsipaw?”  I asked, trying to give him an idea of the general goal for where I was going.

“Mmmmmmmm….” he said, shaking his head even more violently, “no.”

Oh ok, it seems I’m lost, then. I started walking towards this Ohm Sun place, which wasn’t on my map to begin with. I actually enjoyed being off on my own, with the comfort that I wouldn’t have to hike with Thomas all day. I am, probably because I’ve spent so much time in the mountains,  OK with the idea of being lost in the woods. It was quite the adventure, and I actually enjoy the unknown out there.  Lost in a city?  Forget it.  I hate it more than anything. But lost in the woods, I start daydreaming and humming, and don’t quite care how I will get “there.”  One village is no better than any other, right?  So if I was still lost by nightfall, I’d find some village to sleep in.  The sights were marvelous, even with the cloud cover.

I stumbled from village to village, wet and haggard, asking for directions. I was, apparently, very far away from Ohm Tat, because no one, anywhere, knew where to point me. I finally got some good directions from a sort-of-English-speaking Monk, who told me it was another 2 hours walking down a “cow road.” Mind you, this is after already walking 4 hours from our lunch spot, which was supposed to be only 3 hours from Ohm Tat. OK. So I started walking. I walked and walked and walked. Every hour I went, I asked someone new, and it was always still 2 hours away. What the hell, I kept thinking. I’m never gonna get there.

As I was walking throughout the day, it occurred to me that the sound of cowbells usually indicated that I was close to a village.  So I began associating the sound of bells with the feeling that I was getting close to something, and I started following the sounds of cowbells.  I started thinking about these cows, who constantly hear the ding dong of these bells all day and I started wondering (as a behaviorist), what they associate the bell sounds with.  They must think that the sound of bells means daytime!  They probably are so conditioned at this point in their lives that they think cowbells are like birds singing on a sunny day.  And when there aren’t any sounds of cowbells, the birds are gone (but really, the cow has just laid down).  So daytime means bells, and nighttime means no bells.  What a fun world it must be for these cows to live in, where they have a constant soundtrack of bells!  Hah. This rambling is evidence of my daydreams…

Well, at this point, I was beat. My legs were exhausted from walking all day, and I was losing my footing with every other slippery step. I was covered in mud, and starting to realize that the sun was going down, and I might have to sleep out in the woods alone in the rain. Good thing I left my hammock in Hsipaw. And good thing I didn’t bring any food. I was starting to lose hope, when I saw a village below me. I didn’t care if it was Ohm Tat, or not, at least it was a place to sleep. I practically ran down the hill, as little boys and girls came out of their houses to scream “bye bye!!” as I ran by.

I found the monastery at the other end of town, where the other foreigners were. There were 6 of us total, all staying in a female monastery on the edge of the mountains. It was beautiful, and peaceful, and I was so happy to be there, finally, after such a long day. The nuns were very kind, and they showed me to my sleeping quarters.  The others weren’t there when I arrived, but their backpacks were.  When they got back, I asked them where they had been.  They were in no mood to discuss, but Thomas, with his rolling R’s and vivacious speeches, said:

“Ah!  This monk walked us all the way back up the hill to show us the stupa!”

“You mean the one we passed walking into this village?”  I asked.

“Yes!  He vaz so PWOUD of the thing, but ve didn’t want to walk anymore!  He doesn’t rrrrrrealize how many of zoze things ve’ve seen!  Oh I am so TIRED!”

Hah.  I could just imagine the monk insisting that he show off their village’s small stupa, with these three exhausted hikers following politely back up the hill after a 9 hour day of hiking.  Amazing.  They told me on the way back, he led them down a miserable “shortcut,” which the monk practically ran down, and these foreigners with no shoes and complete darkness tripped and tumbled the whole muddy way down.  I felt good that at least someone else had a bit of an inconvenient aspect of their hike.  I thought I was alone there.

They fed us an incredible feast, and treated us warmly. I was surprised to see, after dinner, that they went up to the main room where we were sleeping and turned on the TV to watch Buddhist television. It was like those channels we have that are preachers talking about this that and the other, only this was a scene of chanting monks. How interesting! I watched for a while, then crawled under my blankets to read.

The next day, the sun started to come out. It was breathtaking! The mountains of Myanmar are simply incredible. I walked with Dima the whole day, as fast as we could; we wanted to get away from the group, and make it to the last village, where we could stay without the others. The others were headed to the second to last village. So we hiked and hiked and hiked, fast and hard. We even decided to go up the “shortcut,” which, on our map, was indicated as “forest, not to go.” Well no shit: it was straight up. I mean like stairs.  And Dima wanted to go fast.  So what should’ve taken 40 minutes took us 20.  A a nice challenge, but it’s been a while since I’ve hiked like a lion is chasing me, so it took a lot out of me.

“Dude, I’m gonna hurl.  I’m tasting peanuts and stomach bile in my throat.” I said, trying to catch my breath.

“Hurl? What is this?”

“Nevermind. I’m slowing down.”

Us slowing down still got us to the last village at a reasonable hour. Well, also, we cheated a bit. We were walking, and a motorbike came down the hill behind us, blasting Burmese pop music from a small stereo attached to the front of his motorbike. We waved him down to ask if we were going the right way, and he signaled us to hop on.

Three people, two backpacks, and one motorbike. It was a squeeze. And we definitely thought we were going to die. In the beginning, Dima, behind me, was screaming.   I could see our driver smiling in his side mirrors, as I was laughing hysterically in his ear, and Dima was yelling, “SLOW! HORN!”  After a couple minutes, the screaming stopped, and Dima just let out a sigh.

“I just don’t care anymore,” he said, seemingly giving up all hope for survival.

This movie doesn’t give justice to the slippery mud and cliffs that we zoomed around. But all in all, I thought it was fine. Our driver was a pro. Yeah, it was muddy and slick, but he was maneuvering like a champ. I was thrilled to be off my feet, and he thought it was hilarious how much I was laughing and clutching his shoulders for dear life. He took us for 15 minutes down to the next village, which would’ve taken us an hour walking. Awesome.

When we arrived, the realization that this town was tiny, and that we weren’t sure if people ever stayed here, started to sink in. We asked around, but people didn’t seem to understand that we wanted to stay there. They kept telling us Hsipaw is only 2 hours more. We couldn’t physically walk two hours more. We needed to rest, and it was getting dark.

Finally, as we were sitting on the side of the road, figuring out what to do, a lady approached us and said “Follow me. My home. You sleep.”
We walked up a little hill to her home, and she introduced us to her husband. It was incredible. This whole experience was sort of familiar to me, reminding me of the time in the Amazon that I was dropped off by some random Brazilian at a family’s house 5 days boat-ride away from civilization. I slipped and slid up the hill to their home with a dead chicken and a bag of food as an offering, given to me by my instructor. The look of bewilderemt on the family member’s faces was priceless. This experience was similar, but at least I’m sure they’ve seen Westerners before.

We spent the most lovely evening and morning with them. The mother is 32, and her husband is 39. We communicated in hand signals and one-word phrases, and with pointing at a world map that they had hanging next to the blackboard. The mother is a teacher, and her husband, we learned, is a soldier.  They met 20 years ago, when he was a soldier.  They are from different states, and are now living in a very remote part of the Shan state, very far from both of their orignal homes.  So I was very curious as to how they met.  I wasn’t able to get the whole story, of course, but I learned that they met during his military service.  The way he conveyed to us that he was in the military was through the phrase “CSI,” like the American show.  I asked if he was police, and he said no.  Finally, he came out with the word “soldier,”  and he started waving and shaking his head yes.  ”Soldier! Soldier!  Eh!” he shouted, while going to the window to show how he would aim with a rifle.  He was injured by an explosion that messed up his eyesight, and he was shot in the leg. When I told him where I come from, he tapped his head in disbelief. “Washington!  Obama!”  (thumbs up).  From then on, every time I tried to explain my travels, the reference point was “Washington.”  I pointed to the map, showing him that I flew from “Washington” to Myanmar, and then where I am going from here.  He kept shaking his head, smiling, and making hand gestures implying that I am crazy. He would mutter things like, “Far! Money! CSI!”  I got the impression that they have little to no money. He said the government pays him $600 kyat per month as pension, which equals roughly 80 cents. Unbelievable.  So for him, having people in his home that have the money to fly from the US to his country, is totally crazy.  Unfathomable, was the word I bet he would’ve used if he knew it.  He pointed to Myanmar on the map and signaled that he wants to stay put.  No traveling for him.

In the evening, after dinner, the whole village came to our house to watch dance practice. There was a group of girls that practice every night for 2 hours for the New Year ceremony. We got to watch the practice in awe, and these girls and their beautiful dances. It was such an amazing experience. Unfortunately, since there is no electricity in the house, this video came out too dark, but it gives you a bit of an idea.

They gave us food, and a place to sleep, and we gave them gifts: I gave her my scarf, and Dima gave him his headlamp (which the father was completely obsessed with). I gave pens and paper to their son, and folded a paper crane for them, which they hung from the ceiling. It was lovely. The mother gave me a scarf that she knitted.  And in the end, we left them some money, despite their protests against such giving.

This morning, we headed down the trail, smiling and talking about the wonderful time we had. Only a half an hour away from their village, we heard a motor bike coming down the road. We turned around, and saw the father coming down towards us with a bag of watermelon slices. He borrowed the bike from a neighbor just to deliver the food. How sweet.  They were such lovely people.

My time in the mountains was unlike anything I could have hoped for.  I just want to stay in these villages forever.

The video below shows me and a traditional lungi, otherwise known as a sarong, that I bought in Nam hsan. I couldn’t figure out how to put on, so Dima held the camera as I was helped by a team of local lungi-experts