We’d arranged to explore the Market at around 7 o’clock in the morning.
Putao Market.
With appetites whetted by the walk, we returned to Putao Trekking House for breakfast. They’d laid on white toast with butter and preserves followed by a plain omelette for me. They couldn’t resist following that with a pancake and honey. I have to admit, the pancake was very good.
After breakfast, we set off on the main feature of the day – a trek of around ten miles to Namkhan Village. I’d loaded my backpack with clothes and essentials for one night’s stay at a guest house at our destination. We initially set off in the Toyota – Aung, the Local Guide, the driver and two young men who travelled in the luggage space at the back and whose function wasn’t immediately clear.
The two young men who accompanied us to Namkhan.
After a few miles, we stopped at a small village of bamboo houses, picked up our backpacks and began our trek by walking through the village to the pretty, rolling wooded countryside beyond. We crossed a number of narrow pedestrian footbridges made of bamboo but there appeared to be fords adjacent so that motor vehicles could also follow the track. In other places there were wider, rather ramshackle, bridges which presumably could support a light vehicle. It became hotter but I knew that the first ‘leg’ would only be an hour. We arrived at another small village where we joined a tarmac road and continued over the brow of a hill, where a river crossed by a suspension bridge could be seen, with a golden pagoda on the opposite bank gleaming in the bright sun.
The suspension bridge appeared to be of local design. The two orange-painted towers on opposite banks were reinforced concrete and the ends of the suspension cables were anchored to substantial concrete blocks. The actual bridge deck was fabricated from modular ‘Bailey’ bridge parts with the road surface in timber. On either side of the bridge deck there were ‘horizontal catenary cables’, anchored to smaller concrete blocks. These cables were then connected to the bridge deck every few yards by smaller cables. The function was presumably to counter horizontal sway of the deck, but it’s a feature I’d not previously seen (although we crossed a number of similar bridges later in the trip).
As we walked across the bridge, a painful groaning came from the far bank, where one of the ubiquitous Chinese-made heavy lorries was struggling along a track which led from the river bank to the road we were on. When we reached the far bank, the lorry had parked and the driver and his mate were on the ground examining the rear axle. The lorry was loaded (or more probably overloaded) with stone and, from the noises it was making earlier, they were right to be concerned.
Next to the parked lorry was a small tea house where we paused for refreshment. We left our back packs in the restaurant and walked a few hundred yards to the pagoda we’d seen from the top of the hill – Kaung Mu Long. Major reconstruction work was in progress and although it looked new, it’s on a very ancient site. Outside the pagoda was a display of photographs and plans detailing the reconstruction. I was fascinated by all the trades involved in completing the work. The approaches to the pagoda were via steps covered in marble slabs and two smiling women were mixing grouting cement and grouting the gaps between the marble slabs. In various places, men were painting different features in gold, white or coloured paints. The hardest work was being carried out by a group of women working on the river bank below us who were involved in the protection of the river bank against erosion. Large rectangular wire cages called gabions were being filled with round stones carried from the shore manually. I noticed a ‘CAT’ packaged standby generator at the base of the pagoda to power the various electric lights which were still being wired.
I'm afraid there's been too much going on to write up all that's happened but, sooner or later (probably later) I'll try to complete the story and add pictures.
All my posts describing this trip to Myanmar can be found here.
My pictures
The following albums (on Flickr) hold pictures relevant to this post:-
Putao.
Trekking in Kachin State.
Kaung Mu Long Pagoda.
Trekking to Nang Kham Village.
Nang Kham Guest House.
All my albums for this trip (except purely 'technical' ones) can be found here.
[Text and Pictures added 23rd June 2015]
