One hears of perfect locations, crystal clear waters surrounded by wooded mountains and topped with azure cloudless skies, beautiful warm days, chilly star filled nights and misty dawns, a place populated by happy friendly people, where life seems to have stood still for millennia. Shangri-la? No, welcome to Inle Lake.
Inle is a freshwater lake located in the Nyaungshwe Township of Taunggyi District of Shan State, part of the Shan Hills. It is the second largest lake in Myanmar and one of the highest at an altitude of 2,900 feet (880 m). During the dry season, the average water depth is 7 feet (2.1 m), with the deepest point being 12 feet (3.7 m), but during the rainy season this can increase by 5 feet (1.5 m). It's main population are Intha people who earn their living with fishing and agriculture.
Yes there are tour groups here, more than we'd seen elsewhere. Typically late middle aged, badly attired French. However the lake at 45sq miles was plenty big enough to avoid them.
We spent three nights here at the Sky Lake Hotel and loved it. On both days we hired a man and a long boat to travel around, avoiding the more heavily touristed sights. The driver must have thought us mad, declining offers to visit the cheroot, silver, or lotus weaving villages. And avoiding taking pictures of the long necked girls, whose necks are stretched with brass rings. They appear to be brought into the shops to demonstrate weaving and embroidery crafts, but somehow to us it felt they are being exploited as photo ops, so we declined.
By the time we surfaced on day one for breakfast at 8.30, the hotel was deserted, apparently everyone leaves at 6.30 for their trips, their bird watching and their treks, we'd agreed on a 9.30 start, oops! Anyway, the long, narrow boat arrived, it appeared to be made from a large hollowed out tree trunk. Boarding without capsizing was an art, (one which we never did manage gracefully....) and sitting in three wooden armchairs, like the three wise monkeys, in a row facing forward, we sped off across the mirror lake. Bunches of water hyacinth floated by, one legged fishermen shouted out their "mingalaba's", families rowed past with young children. There were many stilt villages on the lake, the dilapidated bamboo houses, elevated about 2 metres above the dry season lake level. We wouldn't like to live in them when the rains come.
Our first stop was Indien, about an hour's trip from the hotel. The cold chill of the morning as we sped across the lake soon gave way to warmth as we slowed to navigate the narrower tributaries. We passed through Ywama, one of the larger lake villages, and then along an increasingly narrow channel, through bamboo groves, past wallowing buffalo, and women washing themselves and their clothes, before arriving at the long boat car park! There were some tourist stalls, the first we'd seen, we ended up buying an old sponge ware bowl, reminiscent of Llanelly pottery, obviously left over from the days of Empire. We are all templed out, so we ignored those and David found himself playing pied piper to a pack of young puppies as he fed them biscuits. They rewarded him with a lick on the hand and paw prints on his jeans. Gill followed with a hefty dose of Gill jel.... Not ones to linger, and with a lunch recommendation in our pockets, it was soon back in the boat and on to Nampan where we'd been told that there was a stilted Italian restaurant called the Golden Kite. We'd been eating curries for ten days and so pizza was an attractive option. To be fair we enjoyed good pizza and carbonara pasta, washed down with secret water, enjoying sitting in the shade, as boats sped past, locals going about their business, we were chilling out and enjoying the view.
The return journey was via some huge floating market gardens. These are floating bamboo rafts, piled with soil, and tended from dugout canoes. All sorts of tasty looking veg was being grown, especially beautiful looking tomatoes, apparently Lake Inle is the tomato capital of Burma. At least they didn't have to worry too much about watering their crops! We didn't stop, the hotel beckoned. We returned to the sound of welcoming drums in the mid afternoon sun. We were the first back, so our day was short but we were happy with our trip and had seen the lake. Afternoon snoozes and reads beckoned. No charging of any electrical gadgets however, no power till 5pm...
Sunset was the next highlight, again, sneaking secret water. We sat looking over as the sun set over the hills in the far distance. A few lights twinkled on the far shore and a couple of larger crop burning fires glowed in the hills. Apart from the odd swish of water, it was silent. The weather here has been cloudless blue skies all the way, and whilst at the lake, due to its altitude, we had much cooler evenings than we had been used to. But the real upside of that is that the clear skies, together with the lack of light pollution, gave us an amazing starscape each night. We discover that none of us are in the running as the next presenters of "The Sky At Night", and weren't even sure that our iPads had us in the right location as the Starwalk app confused us a bit. But overall, we think David won star knowledge on points..... Obviously being on stilts over the lake, with no roads in sight and no headlights on boats, we had to eat at the hotel, which mercifully was great, we are especially loving the bei ji made of soy sauce, garlic, chili and lime. Ant and David added it to everything. Burmese food, surprisingly isn't very spicy and Ant and David had to add "with big spice" to every food order, and then they added more bei ji....
The lake area has a rotating five day market, we had avoided the one the previous day at Ywama, it's floating and apparently overrun by tourists, so we went instead to the next day's one at Maing Thauk, just a five minute boat ride away, through some narrow channels, where we nearly capsized! The market wasn't so touristy, mostly locals, the tarpaulins were slung low for shade, meaning that we kept bumping our heads as we wandered past the fish, meat, (you had to be there to appreciate how gross that was), vegetables, rice, and great imported plastic Chinese household goods stalls. David did some shopping remembering to hand over the money in the traditional way, give with right hand whilst holding your left hand to your right lower arm.
One of the things we'd really enjoyed at the hotel were dinner plate sized tofu crackers, we'd assumed they'd been made at the hotel. However, the market was full of them, lying in the dust, and being nibbled by dogs! It didn't stop us eating them again that night though, but we did inspect each one closely for doggy tooth marks.... The old fashioned blacksmith was doing a brisk trade in knives and David got himself a haircut for 1000 kyats (just under pound). A most enjoyable hour.
Our final stop was the town at the north of the lake where we had first arrived, Nyaung Shwe A backpackery town, with a nice vibe, but still not crowded. We spotted a sign that asked 'are you tired of rice?'. The answer was yes, so we followed the sign down an alley or two to the Inle Pancake Kingdom, come Internet cafe. We sat outside in the shade, on this dusty backstreet whilst David failed to download any emails, the Internet is shockingly bad everywhere, and here it was next to useless. They did a great plate of chips though, which we devoured followed by sweet pancakes of various flavours. Yum. Maybe there are some benefits to a few tourists! A slow stroll around this dusty town, past a few monasteries, past horse and carts and the heat was getting to us all, so it was back to our waiting boat driver and the trip back to the hotel.
The lake is really beautiful and we were all sad to leave the next day. It was a very different three days, quiet, peaceful, pollution free. The main thing it had in common with the rest of Myanmar was yet again, the friendliness of the people. It wasn't even as cold as Gill anticipated, at one stage she only had five layers of thermals on! Really recommended for a less chilly than anticipated chill-out...
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