“There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew.”
-Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma
The picture above was taken from the patio of my hotel room on the shores of Inle Lake at sunrise. Is it no wonder that Inle Lake was one of my favorite destinations in Myanmar? We finally were in nature that I could appreciate, and the mode of travel for two whole days would be strictly by boat. Low-slung longboats, in fact - an open air, breeze-through-your-hair type of boat. Heaven. The clatter of our boat's two-stroke engine lulled me like a baby as we wended our way through the open waters, inlet channels and marshes of the lake that is roughly half the size of Lake Tahoe. Life revolves around the water at Inle Lake - the villages are all on stilts; the gardens are all floating; the transportation is via flat-bottomed skiffs. And it's the silhouette of the Intha tribe's unique leg paddling technique that is the definitive image of what Inle Lake is all about. Lovely, eh?
