I’ve been feeling a bit burnt out the past few weeks. Maybe it’s not so surprising, after all I’ve been on the move since I landed in Korea two months ago. I haven’t stayed in one place for more than few days. I get to know people and then I’m out the door and onto the highway.
Everthing is starting to blur together. Conversations in a language I don’t understand. Oily food, tripe, pigs feet, fish heads, intestines, heaps of white rice. Ride after ride on the highway. If I’ve learned one thing, here it is: highways look the same no matter where you are in the world.
But then there’s the good stuff. I met up with my ‘ole pal Eero in a little town at the Thai-Burmese border last week and we took a bus into Myanmar.
We slept on the floor of a shared flat in the center of Yangon with Yanis from Germany, Boris from France, Estella from Germany, and Caity from Australia. On Monday morning I visited the Indian embassy and applied for a visa. In the afternoon, back at the flat, Estella invited Eero and I to visit Chin state (to the West of Yangon) with her for the week.
“What’s there?” We asked.
“I dunno, mountains.”
“Sounds good.” We said.
It turned out to be a great choice. A reaffirmation of why I’m travelling. We took a bus to Mindat that afternoon. Twelve hours later we were in a tiny town nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. I put on a sweater and toque for the first time in weeks. We met a Burmese guy there, Jude, who’d studied English literature in Manila invited into his home overlooking the valley. He told us about his father’s village across the valley and over the next mountain.
“Cool, maybe we’ll hike there.” We said.
So the next day we went down a mountain path into the valley, passing through small villages along the way. We built ourselves a posse of kids who followed us down the path, from a distance at first, hiding everytime we’d look back at them. By the time we made it down to the river they were swimming and catching little fish with us. On the way up the opposite valley wall we suffered a serious case of the wobble legs and thought of turning back to sleep in the valley. At Estella’s urging we pushed on and found an abandoned shack at the summit that we slept in. We snacked on cucumbers and peanuts and cooked potatoes in the embers of our campfire. Eero and Estella didn’t know that you can bake potatoes without tinfoil.
The next morning, not keen to push our wobbly legs, we walked down a dirt road that we figured would bring us to a village. In the late morning a truck passed by loaded with bags of rice. We hopped on the back and it took us a few hours down the road. Turns out that truck was the only traffic that road sees. My belief that “if there’s a road you can hitchhike it” has met its first serious challenge. So that’s how we found ourselves in Khai Rain, a tiny village with no shops or restaurants, unable to leave or even explain what we were doing there.
The driver gesticulated to us that he’d be back again the next day and that we could sleep the night in the village.
After a dinner of eggplant curry and fried eggs served over rice (cooked for us by the truck driver) we were hanging out on the stoop of a local’s home. It wasn’t long before a buddhist monk, on his way back from building an education center in the woods, met us and invited us to his monastery to spend the night.
His monastery was a half hour hike from the village, through rainforest, up into the mist shrouded peak. The experience made me think of you mom, it’s what you would call a magical moment. At the top of the mountain the mist cleared and the neighbouring mountains peaked their heads out of the fog like prairie dogs on a field of whipped cream. As our monk friend spoke with us in broken English, a double rainbow dominated the evening sky, contrasting itself against the golden pagoda. With the setting sun, as if nature hadn’t yet satisfied itself with her display, the stars shone brilliantly in a clear sky. On the horizon we caught the occasional flash of lightening from a far off thunderstorm. In the woods around us flew a thick cloud of fireflies, imitating the sparkling stars above.
—–
Now Eero’s flown to Kuala Lumpur to visit a friend and I’m back at the shared flat in Yangon. Now I’ll explain the title of my post “Back to China.”
See, I picked up my Indian visa from the embassy yesterday and, for some reason, I only got a one month visa that starts on the date of issue (not when you cross the border like most visas). After doing more research and talking with people who have done the trip (both Yanis and Estella made it to Myanmar from Europe without flying) I’ve discovered that it’s impossible to get a Pakistani visa outside of your home country.
Another option I’ve been entertaining is to cross into Tibet from India via Nepal. But independent travel there is impossible – I’d need to get a special permit and travel with a tour group, it’d cost hundreds of dollars and take weeks to get from Yangon into northern China.
I briefly toyed with the idea of trying to catch a boat from Mumbai toward Iran, Africa, or the United Arab Emirates. But, with the clock ticking on a month long visa, I’m worried that I’ll end up stuck in Mumbai with an expired visa and no option but to fly out.
So, my final option is to backtrack through Thailand, Laos, and into southern China. From there I can take a three day sleeper train to Urumqi, Xinjiang province. In Urumqi I can visit the Khazakastan consulate, and then I’m a stones throw from Russia and a hop and a skip from Europe.
Plans, huh?
Gnarly Travels 