- First-day trekking from Kalaw to Inle Lake
- Second-day hiking from Kalaw to Inle Lake
- Third-day trekking from Kalaw to Inle Lake
We woke up at 6.30 after a restless night on a paper thin mattress lay down on the upper level of the guide's house. A cat slept next to David's head who is suffering from allergies. The pigs made weird sounds during the night. Water was dripping from our mosquitoes net due to condensation. The mattress wasn't very comfortable and temperatures dropped heavily during the night. Nevertheless, we made it through our first in a remote village in Myanmar and were happy to experience what locals live every single day of the year.
A big barrel of water was available to take a quick cold shower but we barely splashed ourselves. We ate a delicious breakfast prepared by our very own chew. Our guide, Hlo Paw was already chewing Kwun-ya (word for paan in Myanmar). The preparation contained parcels of areca nuts, opium seeds, lime and tobacco wrapped in a betel leaf. He explained us the program for our second-day trekking to Inle Lake. Today was going to be the most difficult day: more kilometres to walk, a lot of up and down and heavy rains had turned the trail into a muddy mess.
The rainy season wasn’t over yet! Nevertheless, November remained a good month for the trek as the temperature is hot but bearable and the scenery is full of green, yellow colours.
At the end, the day ended up being the best and more interesting day of our trek. The weather was gorgeous. The guide was in a superb mood. The scenery was brilliant and postcard material. The villages we passed by were charming and the locals were adorable. The people of Myanmar are the friendliest of all the Asian countries we had visited so far.
We continued our walk under the scorching sun until lunch time. As always we had too much of too delicious food cooked by our chef. We must have put on some weight during the trek which wasn't expected.
After a long day, we arrived at the village where we would sleep in. Once again, we were served a delicious dinner but not before we bought a few beers and drunk them up admiring the sunset.