We wake up early and head to the Hsipaw market to have breakfast in a small shop that sells black tea and chapatis with curry. Hsipaw is not the semi-deserted village we had imagined, but a small town of 30,000 people! While we fill our bellies, we discuss on how to spend the day, finally deciding to dedicate it to nature with a trek to the waterfall we have been told about. We start a steady walk towards the hills and approach Hsipaw train station where we cross tracks flooded with people, cows and children. We then walk through small Shan villages where people greets us showing polite and friendly manners; the path that leads us across the rice fields and towards the waterfall is getting smaller as the scenery gets more and more rural. It’s pretty obvious that Hsipaw is an important agricultural center: there are rice paddies, watermelons and papaya plantations, carrots and cauliflower fields. Nearby a tractor and a heap of corn, we make a break and socialize with a family of peasant that is resting under a wood and bamboo hut. The family men share a cheroots with us, and we manage to take pictures of their two kids that are watching us with curiosity, going crazy with joy when we show them their photos on the camera screen. Their alleged mother is having a shower dressed in a lungy sarong in the creek nearby, and laughs amused at the scene. The rest of the path is uphill until we reach an impressive waterfall with a pond below where we treat ourselves to a bath of cool, clear water that restores our strength after the two-hour walk under the sun. From there we have a beautiful view of the valleys below; at their edges, the houses of Hsipaw. On the way back we get a lift from a farmer carrying corn in the tractor trailer; we sit on the hard yellow pile, our body stoically bearing the hits the trailer gets due to the road potholes. We get off at the train station, where they are expecting the regional 3pm train that travels from Mandalay to Lashio, a city 100 kilometers from the border with China. This train, as all trains coming from Pyin U Lwin, had to cross the Gokteik Viaduct, the most significant artifact of this rail line, as well as the highest bridge in Myanmar. Completed in 1900, it is said that it was built to last 100 years, and this means it is lasting longer than expected; in fact the trains run through it at a very limited speed in order to avoid causing structural damage. A good reason perhaps to get to Hsipaw by bus… There are groups of all races waiting for the convoy, in addition to fruit, betel and tea merchants, and a pair of permanent stalls that sell biscuits, coffee and snacks, where I make the acquaintance of one of the owners. She’s a nice middle-aged lady with the face smeared with tanaka powder; while eating betel leaves, she tells me that she is a Catholic and she still remembers a little Italian from the nun’s boarding school! Her daughter (or granddaughter), a small girl of about three years old with shaven head, painted nails and toes, her face also stained by tanaka powder, is sitting on a step eating an ice cream with her fingers and looking at us with amusement. And as time passes and 3pm passes as well, I explore the station, entering a colonial office that reminds me of the Indian train stations built in the 1800’s by the East Indian Railway Company, with the walls of wooden planks varnished in a cream colour, the iron furniture rusty from the tropical climate, the spinning old and noisy fan, the timetables written in white chalk on blackboards hanging from uncertain nails, and a servant in white shirt, linen trousers and flip-flops who counts U.S. dollars and notes the amounts with a pen under the ‘revenue’ column of a faded brown paper register. If it were not for the dollars and the ball-point pen, it could really be a scene from more than a century ago. Amongst the boards on the walls, all written in Burmese language incomprehensible to me, and next to a wall clock that clearly marks 3,20pm, there is the only sign in English, and it states “we will always be on time”… The walk back to town takes us along suburban narrow streets where artisans work wood and handbags, and manufacture cheroots cigarettes. We come across a noodle factory where young workers produce, by hand, sort of spaghetti that will be part of two of the most famous dishes in the area: Mohinga, a fish soup with noodles that is an essential part of the Myanmar cuisine and that is considered by many to be the national dish of Myanmar, and Shan noodles, a traditional dish of the Shan people! At the Hindu temple we contemplate a joyful and skilled pagodas maker in the middle of a new work, red brick over red brick. Mr Ashà, given our interest in his work, invites us to drink a cup of tea in the nearby shack where, seated at a table, he tells us the story of his life, from mischievous child in India to pagodas maker in Myanmar, proudly listing the names and locations of all the pagodas he has built during his career. The main street is now overrun by locals with their rickety scooters; we pass besides 3 children monks in burgundy robes with replicas of automatic pistols and shotguns proudly showing on their shoulder, an  incongruous sight that puzzles us a bit. We look at them puzzled, and accompanied by the their distant smiles we continue walking towards a Buddhist temple where the ordination of a large group of nuns is taking place. Hundreds of them are sitting in the large temple hall, dressed in pink robes, their head...

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We leave Mandalay reluctantly but with the desire to explore what here they branded ‘the way to China’. The bus is comfortable, it ventures into the hills and soon reaches the colonial town of Pyin Oo Lwin, where the British colonizers lived when Mandalay’s heat became too oppressive. We stop for a quick meal break and then set off again towards Hsipaw, described by the guide as “a peaceful stopover”. After about three hours of travelling we approach a series of uphill hairpin turns where a truck that has rolled over a few bends higher forces our minivan to join an endless column of trucks carrying boulders, logs, sand, scaffolding, bulldozers and bricks (it appears that the construction industry is in vogue in Myanmar), sometimes alternating with pick-ups full of passengers and merchandise, as well as some cars. The darkness comes early and it is pitch dark; the vehicles in column form a strip of lights that move at alternate gaps and only in one direction: the north. Sometimes we follow local passengers who get off curious, or to smoke a cigarette or take a needed break when the waiting gets too much; they talk animatedly about the incident, creating small groups with drivers and passengers of other vehicles, and then get on in a hurry when the tail seems to move and drivers call passengers out loud and set the vehicles in motion. A series of checkpoints and less than 7 hours later, we are approaching Hsipaw, a Shan ethnic outpost. A large village with a ghost appearance: wooden houses, closed taverns and shops, a few Chinese-looking characters, dark-skinned, almond-shaped eyed. It’s definitely chilly out here. After wandering along a pair of long, dark and deserted streets that correspond to the village ‘center’, we settle into a wooden guest house modelled like a Swiss chalet, only slightly less luxurious … It is 10pm, we calm our hunger in the little place nearby where a family of Nepalis (gift of the British colonial era) serves tea and Indians chapati to a mixed clientele of Shan, Indians, Muslims and Burmese. We sit on ultra low wooden stools and we enjoy black tea and chapati while observing the comings and goings of people. It’s amazing how many different races and ethnicities live together in this dusty village. The cold intensifies, as well as the tiredness. The shower is cold but the bed is made ​​warm by a thick wool blanket. The good morning is at 7am; it is still cold. We get out to explore the village and discover that it looks totally different than the night before: it is total chaos, with trucks that share the roads with bicycles, merchants, kiosks, mechanics, pedestrians and tourists. The sidewalks are broken off or uprooted, holes are frequent and large, the cobbled paths alternate with stretches of poorly cemented areas, making a simple walk an endeavour. A thick cloud of dust perennially rises from the potholed streets and makes the village look immersed in fog; a vaporous smoke comes out of the mouth while we breathe , but the sun is already dissipating moisture and warming the air. After breakfast we decide to head down to the river in search of something to do. We pass the market and reach a residential area of ​​small houses and cabins overlooking the river. We somehow socialize and communicate with those we meet, who try as hard as they can to understand exactly what we want and to help us, whatever the need. The Dokhtawady River is clean and its waters clear, but it is said that his currents are really dangerous; the locals tells of malicious nats (spirits) that attract swimmers towards certain death. We are finally able to agree on a boat ride with the wife of a boatman, who does not seem to like the idea of ​​interrupting his meal, but who nevertheless accepts, changes and proudly lowers his 10-meter boat in the water. We navigate upriver for a few kilometers observing rural life, farmers, ruminating buffaloes pulling plows, paddy fields, kids running around or bathing in the calm waters. The boatman makes a stop after four kilometers and takes us to visit, on foot, a village built on the banks of the river: wooden houses made of stone or bamboo where women cook, wash clothes or clean the cobs and men build walls or artifacts made ​​of bamboo or thatch roofs. There is calm, order and cleanliness in the village dirt roads, and all the villagers greet us as we pass. Once back on the boat, we continue upriver up to kilometer 7, in the vicinity of an iron bridge, where our guide reverses the boat and starts the journey back. We get off three kilometers from Hsipaw in order to take a walk and enjoy the place in quietness. We say goodbye to the nice boatman and walk along a path that runs along the bank of the river. We make a couple of stops, one to eat a bowl of noodles artfully prepared by a woman who runs an improvised kiosk: the bamboo pagoda where we eat was built literally ‘on the river’, while the kitchen she uses is the one at home, just a bit higher on the hill behind. On the outskirts of Hsipaw, at about five o’clock , we walk past a temple that houses a school for monks where we witness the end of the classes; we join the ranks of children monks returning to their homes. The traffic becomes more intense as we enter the village, and the dust is the host . The day was hot yet it was cooled by a nice river breeze. We spend the evening strolling along the central Namtu Road, where until the late hours of 9pm (!) Locals and tourists dine in the many restaurants of this street. We enjoy a plate of Shan noodles from Mr.Food, a bit for the name and a bit because it advertises...

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I sleep 11 hours in a row and I do not even hear the 5am litany. After a breakfast of homemade cookies and tea in a Chinese teahouse, we walk towards the temple of Prie Jé, a half hour walk from Namshan direction south, where they celebrate the last day of the Kahtain festival. We cross a lovely hilly area with wooden houses surrounded by flower gardens and well-cared for vegetable gardens. The locals greet us joyful, some children are playing with colorful kites that fill the sky in this brilliant day. I entertain a conversation with a barber originating from Bangladesh who is inclined to talk politics; he tells me that Burmese people in general are still suspicious of the moves of the central government, which according to him has a hidden agenda despite the recent openings. The natural reserves are sold to China, which finances a harbor area in the Burmese coast, a gas pipeline and an oil pipeline that will reach Kumming in southern China, as well as a hydroelectric plant in the Burmese Himalayan regions where local people are organizing protests against exploitation. He tells me how his family moved to Yangon during the war with the British in the 40s, then moved here in the state of Shan to open stores. He claims that he has never been granted nationality in Myanmar and eventually lost that of his country, so after the independence of Bangladesh in 1964, his family was not able to return home. He says he’s still stateless. While he is cutting the hair of a young Shan boy, the scissors opens in two and fall to the ground; we all laugh a lot. “See? China buys good resources and sell us cheap merchandise, like the scooters, which are often so poorly built that it is not worth repairing them” he comments, amused. He believes that China is doing a roaring trade in these parts, that the recent tendency of the government to open is only temporary and that things will go back to worse. I say goodbye and thank him for the chat. We then continue our journey; the are a lot of people in procession towards the temple hill, amongst them are several elderlies with original faces, proud smiles and clothes for the occasion. Everyone smiles as we pass, and some groups of young people even attempt an approach with what little English they can show off. Upon our arrival at the temple, ceremonies have already started. There are traders who sell food and various amulets, as well as offerings for the monks; the elderlies wear costumes that recall the tribal people of the past, but they do so with such a simplicity that leads me to think that they are just their everyday clothes. The Kahtain festival is celebrated once a year, and apart from the opportunity for locals to meet, dance and dress well, its aim is to make offerings to the monks and nuns of the various villages. Money, blankets and other items that the monks may need are offered by each participant in an humble way. We immediately meet Shandi, one of two ‘guides’ we got to know in Namhsan, and he invites us into a hut where a group of villagers are enjoying a meal of spicy-looking food sitting cross-legged on a carpet of colorful fabrics. We sit and are served plate to fill by drawing from common bowls in the middle of the carpet. The curries are delicious and they taste amazing. The villagers make us feel at ease, watching us but in a much less curious way than we do watch them. We drink tea, as usual, and Shandi tells us about some of the customs of the area and about the importance of today’s festival, insisting that we take pictures of everything we see. We take leave and go out to snoop between the various activities of the temple. In different buildings, people pray, eat, chat, play. The environment is austere, this is certainly not wealthy people, but their authenticity and their apparent honesty conceals it all with a solemnity that seems to make up for the lack of material wealth. Some monks and nuns give their blessing to all those gathered, while others give public speeches focused on the happiness and prosperity that this event will bring to the peoples of the area. We are completely absorbed in these rituals; the path to reach Namhsan and yesterday’s mud and rain are light-years away. Shandi is about to leave and invites us to visit his village, a few minutes from the temple. We get there in 15 minutes of walking between stairs and descents, accompanied by leafy trees branches several meters long that shade us in part from the rays of a scorching sun. At the bottom of the hill there is an open space crowned by a forest of white pagodas: it is the village temple. There, on the upper floors of solid wood houses on stilts, old men are preparing giant burners with bamboo branches, pine twigs and incense, covering them with huge sheets of colored paper hand-produced there. These burners will burn for hours and hours during the evening closing ceremonies. We then follow our friend down to a picturesque village of wooden houses on stilts distributed along a main road, like the rest of the villages surrounded by mountains and valleys. His house entrance leads to a large area room that serves as living room and kitchen; the floor is made of earth, the walls are covered with cheap made-in-China plastic sheets, and the wooden planks sofas provide us with some rest while Shandi sends the daughter ‘shopping’ . I get out from the house and follow her with my sight: she enters a couple of neighbours’ homes and comes out with a variety of vegetables, then she returns and engages in the creation, on a rusted stove and pots that have fed generations, of a Palaung curry...

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I wake up with a start, it’s still dark outside the window. I look at the phone: it’s 5am! Extremely noisy speakers that broadcast repetitive litanies wake me up. It’s cold; I wear a thick sweater and get out to check what is going on. I thought it was the small mosque nearby I had seen the day before, but it is instead the old speakers from the Buddhist temple on the hill, on top of which stands, elegant, a golden pagoda. The punishment ends at 6 am, and as the sun’s rays are already lighting up the village, I go out to have breakfast and wait for my traveling companion for the trek to the mountains monastery. The merchants are opening the accordion doors of their shops, they expose their goods and get ready for a long working day. In the  generic stores, colorful sachets of shampoo, hair conditioners and various detergents, as well as candies and sweets, hang on strings that cross through the ‘shop windows’, and are the smoke and mirrors for a series of highly sought-after items here such as soap, skin whitening creams, lighters and matches, perfumes and a multitude of little boxes and sticks of doubt content. All the goods have a patina of dust that covers the packages with a dull veil, making them look old and undesirable. A Chinese merchant in pajama pants, t-shirt and a pinstriped gabardine jacket smiles at me as I pass him, while at his side a charismatic Muslim with a long white beard is setting up his stall. He is an umbrella repairer, and on his table are exposed the tools of his trade: bundles of spokes of various lengths and sizes, central gears, small screws and bolts, skeletons of umbrellas with only the handle and the central rod, cans of oil and grease as well as a series of essential precision screwdrivers. He smiles at us as he zips up his windbreaker jacket, shielding from a gust of cold wind; he then sits patiently, hands in his pockets, and watches the comings and goings in the street, which is becoming more and more crowded. At the tea room, I meet the two guides from yesterday, whom inform me that the morning litany is part of the preparation for an annual festival called Tazaungmon, or festival of lights. This will culminate tomorrow night during full moon, an event that will mark the beginning of a special month, the Kahtein, during which faithful locals offer new robes to the monks’ community. The morning litany will continue every day until the end of the festival. As they see me very attentive, my friends do not just explain about the festival, and while I drink coffee and eat a pancake they fill me with new vocabulary in Palaung language, and they encourage me to repeat every word on the spot even though I am trying to mind my business, still sleepy from the early rising. When I tell them of our intention to walk up the mountains in search of a mountain monastery, they offer to come as guides. It was our initial intention to contract one of them for the trek, but considering the amount of words they both regurgitate per minute, I decide to deprive myself of their company and politely decline with an apology, so they take their leave and go out looking for tourists. They will search in vain, as it is only us, a Korean girl and a French boy that are staying at the guesthouse, the only one in Namhsan. Life is hard here for guides. I meet with my companion at the tea room and we start walking along the main road heading south, crossing the area of tea processing: in every home, colorful characters, some looking over one hundred years old, are busy separating the good tea leaves from the bad ones. Old men flaunting colorful tribal costumes walk sustaining themselves with inlaid sticks. On the road, a sea of tea leaves is placed to dry on bamboo-woven mats resting on the pavements and on the street. These tea leaves have a pungent odor that permeates the air, making the place fascinating and mysterious. Once near the hills, we leave the paved road and venture inside a huge tea trees plantation, strolling through the rows and observing women who collect the leaves, gradually filling the jute baskets they carry on their shoulders. Once we get back to the dirt road, we cross various groups of women that descend to Namhsan on foot. They each carry two huge bags full of tea leaves on their back with the help of a rope tied to their forehead. Conical headdresses shelter them from the sun that at times appears from behind an overcast sky and fluffy white clouds. There are also groups of people who travel to Namhsan on foot or by motorbike to buy gasoline and groceries. We then walk through a series of villages where we are greeted by smiling people, surprised when we boast that bit of Palaung language learned in the morning, which miraculously fixed in our memory despite the early hour. The old trail we follow climbs gradually, surrounded by a lush and silent nature. The sun has gained some space in the sky; we are alone along the path for at least another hour until finally, after over 3 hours of walking during which the temperature continues to drop, we arrive at the monastery of Ton Yu Priè, at an altitude of over 2000m. There, snow-white clouds caress the hills; they travel fast, pushed by a cool wind. A group of young and well-groomed horses graze in a meadow dominated by a hill on top of which stands the huge statue of a Buddha sitting cross-legged on a bed of lotus flowers; it wears a brown tunic and gazes at the horizon, looking north. Scattered among the nearby hills are a series of white stupas of different sizes;...

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After leaving Mandalay in direction north-east, we had a pit-stop of a few days in Hsipaw, a small outpost town situated on the way to China and populated by people belonging to ethnic Shan. It is now time to leave for further traveling. The alarm clock sets off early, we pack our backpacks and since it’s still early we decide to have breakfast at a place near the market, where they serve us watered-down coffee and oily but tasty pancakes. On the way back to the guesthouse, the pick-up van is waiting for us; we get on at the back of the vehicle, which is already full with people and sacks of wares, and undertake the journey to Namshan. The truck climbs on a road only half-asphalted. The journey becomes more and more interesting as we move away from Hsipaw: villages become scarce and people ethnicity changes. The asphalt at some point disappears completely, dust invades the cabin and we begin to see villages that are increasingly more primitive, inhabited by dark-skinned people with mainly Chinese features. We arrive at destination after a 7-hours ordeal (for merely 80 km…), after enduring hundreds of jumps and swings on roads that often turn into stone paths. The body hurts and is in urgent need of a shower and of a glass of water. Despite this, I can assure you it the trip was worth it: mountains and mountains right in the heart of Myanmar, hills crowned with villages set in deep jungles, bamboo forests, tea plantations. At the bottom of the river, rice paddies of a ocher-yellow are in deep contrast with the heavy green of the surroundings and with the murky brown waters. The sleeping village of Namshan, once the capital of the ancient Shan Kingdom of Tawngpeng, is perched on mountains at an elevation range of 1800-2000 meters above sea level, and therefore acts as a lookout into a series of peaks and hills that surround it. Some of these hills are covered with tea plantations, other with poppies plantations, these more discreetly hidden from view… The tea industry is the major resource in the area and provides employment for several of the inhabitants of Namshan and of the surrounding sleeping villages, friendly Shwe (Golden) Palaung people living in one- or two-floors wooden houses covered by rusty metal sheet roofs. The ‘Golden’ comes from the belts they used to wear. Other traditional belts worn by this ethnic group used to be made ​​of silver; today, aluminum belts has long taken their place. Namshan also has a minority of Kayin, Lisu and Shan ethnic and tribal groups, as well as people of Indian and Chinese origins. Namshan means ‘shaking water’, named so after its location on a marsh that was often flooded during the rainy season. The heydays of Namshan were in the 1920-1930 period, when it prospered thanks to its silver mines and its tea industry. At destination, we drop our backpacks in the only guesthouse in the area, located on the main road: a large two-story wooden Chinese-style mansion painted in green and run by government officials. We rent a room built entirely of wood, small in size and with outside bathroom, and with a window overlooking the rear of the property; we satisfy our basic needs and get out to explore the surroundings. It is 3pm, and the sun is already setting behind the mountain peaks. Namshan is basically a wide main road on the crest of a mountain; down on its sides one can see green valleys and views of the villages below. It is certainly larger and more picturesque than what we had imagined. Locals look at us with a hint of curiosity, giving us a mengalaba (hallo) when we cross them. We are soon approached by two local ‘guides’ who invite us to drink tea in one of the traditional teahouses of the village. This seems to be one of the favorite activities of the villagers. You sit in low stools by a plank-wood table, you are served a plastic thermos flask plugged by a cork that keeps the warmth and freshness of the dark beverage it contains:  Le Peyé. The teahouse is dark; teapots, dishes, plates, walls and the counter are covered by a soot formed by the wood-fire that burns at all times in order to heat the water that will fill the jugs of tea. The flat screen television (!) is under the control of one of the patrons who practices the international habit of zapping, passing from news to documentaries, to sports and soap operas, in a never-ending change of channels at 5 minutes intervals which leaves no time to become interested enough to one of the programs. We then follow our new friends for a short walk to a lookout point at the top of a hill, where we watch a great sunset. We socialize with them, asking curious questions while our cameras immortalize the magic colors of a spectacular sky. From the conversations we discover that Namshan is in fact a conflictive area and that the village marks the end of where travel is allowed to foreigners. For years, the warriors of the Shan Liberation Front have been fighting a more psychological than real battle with central government soldiers. These reprisals provoke tensions which often result in bans to visit this region, with the government applying the off-limit to the trekking routes for obvious risks of retaliation towards foreigners. Despite this, our two new friends are more than inclined to chat, and to help us in our search for areas to discover. The main reason that pushed us this far is that Namshan is a great starting point for trekking in the area, and also because it is fairly unbeaten by tourists due to the terrible conditions of the roads that reach it. The streets are problematic especially during tea harvesting, taking place between April and August, when the route to Namshan is often blocked by trucks overloaded...

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