Trekking in Shan State - Part 4

In the afternooon on February 10th, we arrived at our destination for that day: Manau. We checked out the village monastery, where there is one home for monks and another for nuns. The nuns made us a massive and delicious meal!




Here's a 30 second exposure of a stupa overlooking the monastery grounds at night:




That night the moon was really, really red. I saw it and immediately grabbed my camera, took around 40 shots, of which maybe 5 turned out ok. This is a cropped frame, but not enlarged:




We slept that night in Manau with warm blankets protecting us from the frigid temperatures outside, and woke up on February 11th feeling terrific.

Part of the monastery in the morning:




We passed by the home of the nuns on our way out of town, and some of them came to the windows to wave goodbye, like this one:




This was the final leg of our actual walking expedition from Hsipaw to Namhsan, and it wasn't the easiest day by any means. If anything, it was harder as the sun was ridiculously intense and there was even less shade than on previous days. The hill climbs were really steep and I found it extremely challenging. We stopped in a bit of shade by these waterfalls for about 5 minutes at one point:




We made it to Namhsan, a very small mountain town that apparently serves as the local capital. After a nice freezing cold shower and some good food, the four of us went to bed in the only guesthouse in town. The walls between rooms, while visible, offered no resistance to the sound waves emanating from the room next to ours. Throughout the entire night, we were serenaded by the monstrous snoring of some sort of beast from the netherworld. It was by far the worst snoring I have ever heard, and I have heard some CRAZY loud snoring. In the morning the snorer woke up and walked past my room, the door of which was open as Scott was out for a minute. He looked in with a scowl on his face and let out a massive fart. I was glad we only stayed there one night.

That morning, we walked a short distance in town to wait for our 630am bus, which of course arrived around 9 or so. Turns out that February 12th was Burma's Union Day, so there were flags EVERYWHERE.




While waiting, we ate, joked around, etc. Luke, who's around my height (a little over 6 foot), decided to climb onto Scott's shoulders. Adding a 6 ft man to the shoulders of an estimated 6'9" man produced a monster that seemed to frighten some of the local children a wee bit:






Next post: Riding a bus loaded with tea leaves.

Trekking in Shan State - Part 3

After the crazy festivities of the previous night, we were up bright and early February 10th to head out of Konhai and continue onward on our third leg of the journey. This is part of the village monastery:




And a view of the village as seen from the monastery:




Our walk in Shan State took us along, up, and down mountain roads and paths and through small Palaung villages where the locals would come out to stare and often try and feed us. Here's a typical climbing turn around the side of a mountain:




And of course we encountered many Palaung villagers along the path, including a number of people with their animals:




In each village where we stopped for more than a few minutes, we were very lucky to quickly become acquainted with the one person who could speak a bit of broken English. In Om Tet, it was a monk who had spent time in Mandalay and had learned some English there. He was considerably shorter than Scott:




One generalisation that can be made honestly about Burma (and this applies not only to Burman areas, but also to minority areas and non-SPDC areas) is that almost everyone loves having their photo taken (at least, if us foreigners were the photographers). Old and young alike never said no to a photo when I asked, and many told me I don't need to ask - I can just take pictures! I sometimes did this, and never had a bad reaction. Here's one wonderful older woman heading to work on the hillside outside her village. She saw the camera and started modelling for me!




Cows and Burmese ponies are used to carry loads in many parts of Burma. Here in the mountains of northern Shan State, they seem to use cows more frequently.




This friendly lady was happy to stop for a photo with her heavy load, which was probably semi-compacted tea leaves:




We always catch the eye of small children who haven't seen white-skinned people before, or are too young to remember.






And there were many instances where we could see that storied wisdom that comes with age, in the calm smile of an older man or woman who greeted us.




We saw men compacting tea leaves to be taken to the big cities too! They gather them and remove sticks and such, then one man jumps up and down barefoot on the leaves in the bag while the other puts handfuls of leaves into the bag every so often.








Some children were more photogenic than others, but they were all fun to interact with.




Sitting in small tea shops in tiny villages with only a few houses became a common theme on our trek, as the intensity of the sun was really tough and hydration was very important. We drank a LOT of tea! This is the view out of one such tea shop:




On rare occasions, a truck would trundle past us on a road that seems only barely navigable by a motorbike, let alone a loaded truck. And of course there were people all over the place, not concerned about the potential for the truck to roll off the road and down the mountainside.






In one village, while we sat across the path drinking tea, boys were playing make believe. The kid with the mask was my favourite, and in this photo is actually somewhat camouflaged it seems! Beer is very popular in Burma, and the pile of empties in the firewood area behind the boys attests to this.





That night I took some long exposure night shots and then we went to sleep, tired out from our long walk - those photos in the next post!

Goodbye to Granny

Granny raised 7 children and helped take care of 20 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren,




She played ping pong with us,




She came to graduations,




And more graduations,




She was a tremendous Scrabble player,




And she was perhaps the most beautiful person I've ever had the pleasure to know.





She died this past Saturday, June 20th, a little less than two months short of her 100th birthday. This is the eulogy my sister presented at the funeral this morning, by far the best eulogy I've ever heard:


“My name is Josephine Anderson. Agneta Wright was my Granny.

I was in Nova Scotia, looking out over the Atlantic Ocean when I got the phone call that Granny’s time had come. I thought of what it feels like to hug her. I’ve been hugging Granny for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I used to go over to Gran’s place after school. The rule became that the first of us five siblings to call dibs on Granny in the car ride home from school would get to go over. I usually blurted it out the fastest, and I remember visiting Granny as one of my fondest childhood memories.

Gran used to tell me that when I was a baby she’d hold me on her shoulder, and I’d fall asleep without a care in the world. I don’t remember this, but I think the feeling stuck, because to this day the most vivid feeling I have about Granny, the thing I miss the most, is nestling into Gran’s neck, giving her a great big hug, breathing in a whiff of her rose water scent, and feeling the best feeling in the world: true, genuine, unconditional love.

Granny had an extraordinaire life. She lived through WWI and WWII. She contracted and survived the Spanish Flu. She witnessed the change from the telegraph to the cell phone. And still, at 99 years old, she had a dimpled, beautiful grin on her face as if she were entirely delighted. And after all these years, after bringing up 7 children, and living in England, Scotland, India, and Canada, and after reading hundreds of books, and crossing paths with thousands upon thousands of people in her lifetime, she still felt charmed by the world, still felt engaged and passionate, still felt full-hearted joy at the tiny details that made up a single day out of nearly 100 years lived.

Though I myself have only known Gran as a white haired beauty, she wasn’t always 99 years old. Once, she was a little girl with rosy cheeks and a penchant for getting into mischief with her siblings. She told us about the time her brother Jack convinced her to climb out of their landing window, onto the glass-roof passageway that joined their house with their father’s surgery. They didn’t manage to get away with it though; there was a huge clattering when Jack put his foot through the glass roof. Or the time that she and Jack snuck out of the house for an hour to go to the town gardens and play make-believe in a game called Conquest, sure that no one at home would notice their absence. They didn’t get away with that one either. Or there was the time Gran had had enough of a local boy, a “big lout” who’d been bullying her and her friends. She finally socked him one right in the face and gave him a bloody nose. Turned out the boy’s father was a patient of Granny’s father. Gran remembered her dad bringing it up the next night over dinner, and him chuckling a bit. She got away with that one.

Gran ripened well with age. She was tall and slim. She was an actress, a field hockey player, a children’s tutor, and a painter. She met a man named Henry who’d spotted her while she was acting on stage one night, and they soon fell in love. She remembered the time she returned to England from India with a lovely pair of tailored gray trousers, which she knew looked good even if she was the only woman around wearing pants.

She was a mother to Peter, Josephine, Cecilia, David, Raymund, Jim, and Rosemary. She managed to cook and care for all seven of them, and even became an impromptu secretary when her eldest son started up his business in their garage. Gran was very proud of her children, and loved to tell stories of when they were young. Like the time Uncle Peter locked her out of her house in Scotland so he could eat the Christmas cake. Gran was also very proud of her husband, and his abilities as an engineer, and often recalled to us how, during the war, he helped rebuild the very ship that later brought their family of nine from England to Canada.

When Granny was sadly predeceased by her beloved husband Harry and sons Peter and Raymund, she showed the remarkable strength and stoicism she was so well known for. Gran always took care of her family. Up until two weeks before her death, she looked forward to preparing dinner every single Friday night for my mom. And on trips to Bowen, while Uncle David worked hard to take care of the property, Granny would lovingly make him meals too.

Until three years ago, Granny attended daily mass here in this parish. She was well into her 88th year when she finally gave up her post as the Thursday Morning Mass reader. She was also a founding member of Saint Gerard’s Mission on Bowen Island. Granny’s faith guided every aspect of her life, from her love for her children, to her remarkable generosity and love for the poor.

Granny’s friend, Father Murray Abraham, who lives in Darjeeling, India, emailed my mom a few days ago to offer his condolences. He wrote, “If anyone deserves to enjoy the loving presence and joy of God your mother surely does. I feel a great sense of loss. It was so comforting to me to know your mother was ‘just there.’ She was so kind and so encouraging to me in my work for the poor. It was through friends like her that God gave me the strength and the kind of love that helps the poor most of all. It gives me great joy and gratitude to God that he arranged that it would be ‘through’ me that your mother fed the hungry and gave homes to the homeless. May she prepare a place for you—and me—when the time comes that God calls us.”

In her time as a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Granny was the matriarch, the centre of our family. She was a very special person.

When I think of Granny I think of her laughing from the deepest reaches of her diaphragm when retelling one of her favourite old jokes. “What did the ear wig say when it fell off the wall?” “Eeeaaaar we go!” I think of her love of poetry, and the way that from time to time, she would spontaneously erupt with a piece of poetry she’d memorized in her youth. I think of the way she’d catch flies, ants and spiders in her bare hands without flinching. I think of how excited and happy she got when a deer would wander into the garden at Bowen. I think of the way she used to sit in the sunroom, looking out over the ocean so peacefully, with a lovely calmness, a contentedness.

I spoke to Granny on the phone from Nova Scotia the day before she passed away. I told her I’d seen a wild rabbit in the yard that morning; she said, “Just like I used to see when I was young.” I told her to reach out her arms because I was giving her a big hug, and she said “I’m imagining it now.” I told her I loved her, and I said “Goodbye my love.” And she said “Goodbye darling.” And it hit me that we were in two very different, yet similar, places.

I looked out at the Atlantic Ocean, while Granny rested within view of the Pacific Ocean. Gran sounded peaceful, happy, calm. Gran was at the end of a life well lived, a life full of love and laughter, a beautiful life. And we, her family and friends, remain here, to honour her, to share our love for her, to remember a little girl named ‘Neta who climbed trees with her brother and mischievously snuck mulberries from the orchard; to remember a mother who raised 7 caring children, who grew into a graceful woman with permanent laugh lines, whose eyes spoke with the wisdom of age, whose smile showed true beauty, whose laugh spoke love.

A couple of days ago Uncle David noticed a scrap of paper by Gran’s bed. As he looked closer, he realized Gran had written on it. In her dear handwriting was a quote she’d scrawled down. It said, “Live truly, and thy life shall be a great and noble creed.”

Now it is Gran’s time to leave this life. Granny, we love you. And we will try our best to live truly, as you did.”

Trekking in Shan State - Part 2

On February 9th we woke up, freezing cold, in a Palaung village. The Palaung are an ethnic group, many members of which live in Shan State. We ate a big breakfast and quickly left the village to get in a longer day of walking than the previous day. As we left, this little child stared intently at us. Seems to be a ninja in training or something :-)




At one point as we walked up and up and up and up the steep hills/mountains, we came across a massive saw at the side of the road. Scott, a carpenter, assessed it as being ridiculously sharp.




A couple of valley views from hillsides:






In another village, one of the women brought out a ruler to measure Scott, who's around 6'9" or so. Apparently this happens to him on a regular basis.




We had tea with some locals, most of whom could not speak English but this guy was pretty photogenic:




In the evening, there was a big festival in the village. There was dancing, and a massive tug-of-war game. Here's one man doing a traditional dance:




I handed my headlamp to a kid and told him to wave it around in circles for a bit, which they found highly amusing:




The tug-of-war was repeated a number of times, always men against women. The men won most of the time, but sometimes the women managed to win with a bit more organisation and less alcohol. Hundreds of people showed up from all the surrounding villages, it was really a huge deal. Women preparing to pull:




This shows the men ready to pull, and the big wooden 'pyramid' that was at the centre of the rope. To win, one side had to pull the pyramid past a line on the ground. A Buddhist monk would start the match by climbing up and ringing a bell, then both sides would pull as hard as possible to win.




Long exposures turned out quite interesting:




Many older Palaung women still wear the traditional dress of their villages:




Another long exposure showing a few spectators crouching on the left near me, and the men pulling to the right in the background:




This monk was standing alone in the distance in the dark, so I took a 30-second exposure to get the light as it appears here. He didn't move much, and the camera sitting on the grass managed pretty well.




Some stupas at the village monastery:




We headed to bed after a fun-filled night at the festival, and soon we were up again and on our way. More on that in the next post.

Trekking in Shan State

On February 8th, I went for a walk. Having spent two nights in Hsipaw, I had met some other travellers, including three Canadians (one from BC, two from Ontario). We decided to go trekking together, and after fruitless attempts to catch a bus to Namhsan to start the walk back to Hsipaw, we ended up changing our plan to walk from Hsipaw to Namhsan and then bus back.

Crossing a bridge:




Crazily large parasite plant living in a tree:




Strange inedible berry:




My three trekking companions:








At the end of our first day of walking, we had reached a small village. We arranged to stay above a small shop, and eat food there too. A bunch of little children were interested in us, and they loved having their photos taken.




Having some tea:




Moonrise:




Children playing around for the camera:
















This is the room we slept in, which wasn't very comfortable and was extremely cold at night:




We covered only 13 km that day, as we started quite late. It was a good day of walking, though, and the next day we had a big breakfast before continuing on our journey.