CHRISTOPHER DAVY

In one of Kyaukme’s less enviable drinking establishments a plan is hatched over two bottles of locally made rice wine and a few plates of soft beef jerky. My German friend Anselm (a former Boy Scout) and I (a failed Cub) talk of trekking in the beautiful Shan hills around the town. Thura, our guide, seems keen to downplay the prospect of physical exercise and rather impress upon us the virtues of Chinese import motorbikes. We ask him how challenging the trails are and whether all the hillsides are littered with tea trees. He tells us that drinking too much tea puts a brake on your motions.

We agree on a three-day tour. Conveyance between villages by means of motorbike. Each day is to include a three- to four-hour light trek, regular village stops and a cup of tea at every possible opportunity. A full moon Buddhist festival on the second evening crowns our hazy itinerary.

But what about all the tourists in Thailand who hire trail bikes but end up with a mouthful of gravel and a scraped knee? Neither Anselm nor I had ever driven a motorbike, let alone along the rugged roads that hug the contours of the Shan hills, laughing in the face of Nature. And what is the correct verb for motor-biking anyway? Do you drive them or ride them?

Thankfully, Thura is unfazed. “You can practise at the athletics field,” he says, casually.

He wasn’t quite so relaxed though as we proceeded to mangle our way through the gears on his bikes.

“Release the clutch then change gear,” he says each time we complete a lap of the field. He sounds apologetic, as if we’re somehow not to blame for mauling the gearboxes.

Twenty-minutes later and the lesson is over. Riding the bike is a cinch but dealing with trucks, pedestrians, winding roads bordered by vertiginous drops and the ultimate terror: a runaway pram, would be another matter. Do they have mini roundabouts in Shan State? I could only hope not.

A few hours into our so-called trek the fear of crippling a knee subsides and we stop and leave the motorbikes at a small bamboo house by the road. Obviously, we indulge in the obligatory cup of tea before borrowing machetes and setting out to hack a path to the top of the closest hill. The hacking is unnecessary considering the reasonable state of the path, but it does lend a sense of jungle adventure to what is basically a gentle trek for a young Kyaukme city boy and two unfit foreigners flush on the mental – but not physical – imprint of fitter times.

A monk once lived at the top of the unnamed hill, leaving traces of his tenure in a small pond and a few wooden sticks used for a shelter. Looking out at the surrounding hills, dappled green with tea trees and so still in the midday heat, one could imagine weeks slipping away in quiet contemplation broken only by the occasional sound of a shrill cicada in a nearby tree. The only person we meet on our little excursion is a woman with matted hair and ragged clothes sitting at the base of a tree that Thura first mistakes for an animal. Cowards, we creep past this unknown.

We spend the night in Hoo Kwat, a Palaung village set in the dip between two hills. Most of the young men have travelled ahead to the religious festival close by to meet their friends from other villages and drink cheap rice wine and Chinese beer. The women don’t seem to mind. They gather near the open fire and chat, leaving their young children to run around like wraiths through the half-light and wood smoke.

At 4am a fire is already being lit in the main room of the house. Anselm and I drowsily pull on our clothes, grab torches and…

“Where are you going,” asks Thura, half asleep. He looks caught between his duty as guide and his desire for further sleep.

“For a walk. Go back to sleep.”

The thought occurs that he wasn’t awake.

In the courtyard a dog stirs but does not bark. Like two old drunks, Anselm and I stumble through the unlit village, tripping on loose stones, looking carefully for the path that will take us to the Nat shrine that sits at the top of one of the hills. After a few wrong turns and some puzzled mumblings from villagers on their way to the monastery, we find the path and begin the short ascent.

It is still dark at the top and fog obscures any view. All we can see is the faint outline of the sheet metal roofs in the village below and the erratic movements of a few people with torches walking in the streets. The hill is covered in well-established trees and tapers down gently allowing animals to graze – the dull clang of their bells can be heard. The Nat shrine has a life-size faux tiger and a few snakes all locked away in metal cages.

We sit for a while in the dark. Anselm looks to be meditating, meanwhile, I half-doze, dimly aware of the metaphysical uncertainties that confront our age and the creeping moistness rising in my bottom from the dewy ground. The thought of haemorrhoids gives me a numb sense of my own mortality.

But as the sun finally rises from behind the low clouds, lighting the village below and banishing the fog from the valleys, such thoughts are soon enough forgotten. Returning to the village we are accosted by two men wanting to share a drink. They have begun the full moon celebrations early and are totally blathered on rice wine.

At the Palaung house we say goodbye to the women and children after a one-hour photo-shoot that sees the children dressed up in their traditional Palaung dress. They’re well behaved but clearly not impressed with the clothes, headscarves, make-up, prodding and the presence of two strange men with cameras who seem to be responsible for setting in motion the morning’s indignities.

At the village of Toan Hait the full moon festival is well underway. Swarming down the road, to the sound of elongated drums, the locals parade their donations destined for the local monastery. Old women lay it on thick for the crowd lining the road, doing turns and that odd Myanmar style of dance involving wrist rotation and arm flapping.

We finally make our way to Pan Phat village, which lies along the ridge of a hill. Marking the entrance are tall bamboo poles strung with colourful festival flags that whip and flutter in the wind.

We are here for the ka htain religious festival, which honours the monks with donations of everyday necessities and is hosted by a different village each year. Our accommodation for the night is above a pub. Under the house, where animals might normally be kept, are tables and chairs seating men in black leather jackets. They banter and shift drunkenly, meanwhile, their wives listen to the abbot in the monastery across the road. Upstairs in the house a group of young Palaung boys and girls practise traditional songs and dances set to acoustic guitar. Stood in a line, they move tentatively, casting nervous glances at each other from the corners of their eyes. The rehearsal looks to be their first, and with just minutes left until the entertainment starts, their last.

Merging into the crowd in the monastery grounds we wait expectantly for the abbot to conclude his ceremony so that the entertainment can begin. Young children, including novice monks, chase each other around, weaving through the crowd shooting plastic pellets from all-too-real looking BB guns in the shape of pistols and AK47s.

Finally, the women – for it is mostly women – slip from the monastery, half tripping in the darkness as they put on their slippers. A sense of expectation rises in the crowd which edges forward towards the modestly lit stage. The young children announce a temporary ceasefire and perch themselves on the wall behind the stage. Falteringly, the entertainment begins.

The group that was practising inside the house has improved considerably. Dressed in traditional Palaung clothes with bright red headscarves, they dance to electric guitar and drums performed by the local rock band. As the evening progresses, the entertainment lurches between traditional Palaung numbers, American country music and Chinese love songs.

In the morning we set off to visit a Ghurka village. The Ghurkas, of Nepali origin, settled in Myanmar during the British colonial period and they offer us sweetened milk from their cattle. In a Lisu village nearby, a woman shows off her husband’s rifle dating from the 19th century. The men in the village still fashion small shots from lead, which they use to kill animals in the jungle.

We bid farewell to the villages and weave our way back through the hills to Kyaukme, saying goodbye to so much good tea and our excellent guide Thura, whose travel philosophy, we realise, can be summed up in four words: Don’t plan too much.

And then, on our way to Mandalay shortly after crossing the Goteik rail bridge, our train derails. Nobody in our carriage notices anything is wrong until a man comes rushing in, jumps over two rows of seats and pulls on the emergency brake. This is very dramatic and like ripples in a pond the moment’s energy spills out through the train, causing a woman to have a panic attack, which then causes her children to cry, which then causes people to think that someone is having a heart attack. To everyone’s relief, the woman is revived, the children stop crying and we all spill out of the carriage so that its rear end can be jacked up and swung back onto the rails. This procedure is carried out with pedestrian efficiency, suggesting that Derailment could be an unofficial stop on the journey.