Meiktila and Mount Popa
Popa Taungkalat Shrine
With no stable electricity, it seems pointless staying up in the dark and I'm usually in bed by 9:00.
Awake before dawn in Thazi, I'm pedalling towards Meiktila in cool darkness along a quiet road skirting a lake, but the soon sun appears in a glow of orange and it makes sense to briefly pause to take a self-timed snap...
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The sun gets higher and more people appear, with women carrying containers and bundles on their heads, presumably heading to market.
Once past Meiktila, the rural, potholed road is even quieter and undulates in half-kilometer-long waves, each rise a strength-sapping experience. Squinting around from beneath the peak of my cycling cap there's nothing to see - just barren terrain scorched brown by the long dry season.
As I sit at a roadside stall with a cold drink in hand, a minibus pulls up and I instinctively decide to get a ride, with my bike soon tied precariously on top.
Not long after getting dropped off at a village called I-know-not, sacred Mount Popa, a temple-topped, vertical-sided peak, looms up on the horizon like a colossus top hat. You really can't miss it.
Known as 'Home to the Gods', it's Burma's most important nat and is certainly an impressive sight, although one I feel is best viewed from the road. I take a quick snap and keep pedalling north towards Bagan.
My map says it's about 50km from Mt Popa to Bagan and it seems pretty easy. The countryside is flat and dotted with simple houses constructed with whatever people have at hand - mainly bamboo and grass.
I stop at one place when I notice the homeowner perched high up in a coconut tree. What is he doing up there? It looks dangerous.
He descends on a rickety bamboo-string ladder and shows me the small containers hanging from his waist by string, each filled with a kind of sap or juice, then ushers me into his low-roofed home, where his wife and two children are sat at a charcoal fire, the smoke of which fills the place and makes my eyes water. There's no chimney - in fact the hut is bare. Life doesn't get any more basic than this.
It turns out - with gestures and sign language - that they make a sugar substance from the sap by boiling it in a large wok-like pan until it thickens. Then, Mother simply pours it onto a tray, where it sets hard. They gave me some to try. Yummy!
I end up with a bag full and they get a bundle of kyat notes, despite their polite refusal.
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