Inle Lake - Day 1

The trek from the town of Kalaw to Inle Lake took three days. I've written about this trek before, and you can read the article "here." At the lake I immediately boarded a 15-meter-long teak-wood vessel that serves here as public transport. The boat owners, of whom there are many, employ drivers who then ply the lake's surface with locals, tourists, local monks, or various cargo.

Inle Lake covers an area of 116 square kilometers, making it the second-largest lake in Myanmar. It lies at an altitude of 880 meters above sea level, and its shallow depth invites fishing and agriculture.

By boat I traveled to the town of Nyaungshwe, which is on the northern side and provides the greatest base for the flourishing tourism. There are plenty of hotels, restaurants, and shops, and you can very easily find a boat here for wandering around the lake. I stayed at a hotel right by the main water canal, so it was just a few steps to the harbor. The moment I arrived there, the boat owners immediately shouted at me and offered me a ride. But you need to think a bit about where and when to set off.

Every day a market is held in one of several villages, and basically anyone here can tell you which village it's in on any given day. After three days on the trek, I wanted to experience once again that wonderful atmosphere of an Asian market, which fascinates me and always strikes me as very photogenic. So I planned a boat trip to precisely one village (Phaung Daw Oo) where the market was being held, then to the most sacred site of Alodaw Pauk, home to very famous Buddha figurines, and I also planned to photograph a few craft workshops and visit the Monastery of the Jumping Cats.

I set off before dawn. Morning mist drifted over the lake and birds flew overhead. The mornings here are truly cold, so my teeth were chattering in something like 7 degrees above zero. The cold was made worse by the speed of the boat and the fact that I hadn't been feeling well since the evening and definitely had a fever. It took about 45 minutes to get from the north to the south of the lake. Thoroughly frozen, I stepped off the boat and headed to the market. There was an abundance of the classic assortment of vegetables, fruit, and meat found everywhere in Myanmar. However, thanks to fishing, there were also plenty of stalls full of freshwater fish, which is a great experience both for the eyes and for the olfactory cells.

After I'd had my fill of the market, I set off for the Alodaw Pauk temple. It's a smaller complex with a golden pagoda that, as I mentioned above, is known for its small Buddha figurines. Over time these figurines have turned into large golden boulders, because the locals kept gilding them and gilding them until they completely lost their original form.

Near the village of Thaung Thut there is a temple complex with dozens of small pagodas. This complex was in a more remote spot, no market was held here, and that meant I was essentially entirely alone. In all that time I met only about 4 tourists and one old man who was climbing the steps up to the temple and stopped for a moment to exchange a few words with me and ask where I'd come to Myanmar from. And then it was just pagodas and pagodas and photography.

After visiting the pagodas, all I had planned were the various craft workshops, of which there are still plenty around the lake. True, they're gradually becoming more like shops for tourists, but there's still a chance to look over the craftsmen's skilled hands and learn a little about the making of things. I visited a silver-jewelry workshop, a lotus-fabric mill, a cigar maker, and a teak-boat workshop.

Along the whole journey around the lakeshore I enjoyed the views of the individual villages, which are built on wooden stilts above the water. I couldn't get enough of the sight of these fantastical structures, which will surely disappear in time. In the central part of the lake you can also reach an agricultural area where the gardens are built directly on the lake's surface. Large clumps of water hyacinth serve as the base, which is anchored to the lake bottom with stakes; soil is heaped onto it and beds are then formed on which vegetables are grown.

The last stop of the day was the Monastery of the Jumping Cats. The monastery got its name because the monks here really did have trained cats that would perform various tricks. But now they just lounge in a corner of the temple, waiting for a tourist to pet them. The monks gave up the cat training some time ago. But I hadn't come to visit cats; I wanted to see and photograph the unique decoration of this wooden monastery standing on the water. The masterful ornamentation, and above all the four large Buddha statues, really are worth the trip. On top of that, there's a very pleasant garden around the temple that invited me to rest.

Then all that awaited me was about a half-hour trip to the hotel and some rest with my lingering fever. I only hoped I'd feel better the next day, because I wanted to sail all the way to In Dein, a village about 1.5 hours away with a temple complex containing hundreds upon hundreds of pagodas.