From a slow start we leave Kalaw for the hills, navigating through red clay roads slicken by unseasonal rain the night before. The range looks wonderful from up high, every turn and twist of the road reveals a new vista of valleys, floors carpeted in paddy stalks, little stepped terraces in the raveens. stopped shoulders of tea plants, unhedged, brimming over the cup of the valley. The sshhhh of rain on the next hill approaches, but never actually soaks us. although the noise is on top of us.
Tuesday, 3 January, Rain threatening.
Half an hour into the trek, scot/brit fell behind because of a stomach bug, big guy, unfit and gasping for breath, he had a wet pallor. Brit gave him some isotonic agent to put in his water and he moved on. The spanish guy/Anthony Bourdain look-a-like struggled to keep balance on the slipping mud. “Go, go, I must be make careful”
We take the scenic left track at every fork – it’s a delight at every turn.
Teahouse. Nepali.
Lunch is a gift of hot chapati, melon curry and a sweet and savoury chilli paste, just hot enough.
The view from Viewpoint is of an orange-tree grove cascading off the hill top steeply. Chickens cluck and puppies yelp! and chicklets tweet. I want to live atop this hill.
The building itself is a barn, wood and corrugated iron, clad with mud and straw. All 20 or so trekkers from Golden Lily have arrived here for lunch by various ways and means. An American named Jeff came on a delayed flight from Mandalay riding pillion on a bike. Sports apparel, white socks. iPhone, white teeth, a shhh sound in his accent, I think that came from the porcelain veneers.
The chap from Calcutta is an extrovert, turns out he is a drama teacher. Not an arrogant guy so muc, as Michael said, but assertive, his big camera lense always probing, he separates from the group, forges ahead in the morning only to miss us at the forks in the road. He rejoins us at the lunch spot with a suggestion or two about how to operate a proper trek.
The french are everywhere in Myanmar.