Daily Archives: March 8, 2012

So much has happened during the past several weeks that we have been traveling through Burma. We’ve ridden an Asian elephant through teak forests up to the pilgrimage caves of Buddha’s third disciple, Alaungdaw Kathapha, dance with the tattooed Chin women in Mindat on the Chin National Day, sampled fermented sugar palm wine at a roadside stand while the palm trees across the road were tapped for their sweet sap, laid awake most of one night listening to the nonstop chanting from a nearby monastery undergoing its annual 5-day chant festival, been the only foreigners most of the villages we’ve passed through have seen in years.  Our journey has been a truly remarkable experience and I feel fortunate to be here in Burma at this time of great change.  

There’s a special beauty to this country, especially as seen over the span of many days as we hopped boats for 300 miles up the Chindwin River.  Night comes softly in this part of western Burma.  Under an apricot horizon, a lone fisherman balances on the edge of his teak skiff, flings his lace fishing net in a practiced arc, silver droplets of water spraying out from its weighted edge.  A long boat trailing a dragonfly shaft sputters by, its sharp prow shattering the glassy river surface and sending brown ripples across the shallow water.

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