We all awoke to the sounds of the jungle in our spacious comfortable lodges and headed to breakfast. What a treat to find freshly made omelettes on offer. And most importantly the first chance to celebrate Bithja's birthday with a rousing Happy Birthday.
This morning our initial mode of transport was the bus: a chance to hear the brakes on the bus labouring down the steep roadway that we laboured up yesterday afternoon. We continued down winding roads the the temple of Mount Popa that dominates the entire point perched atop the sheer-sided volcanic plug.
The streets were lined with souvenir shops selling 'i love mount popa' t-shirts. Mass tourism Myanmar style still has a long way to go. And that became all the more evident as we started the climb up the 900+ steps to the top .
As you enter you can't help noticing the monkeys lining the stairway as you enter, and they line pretty much one's complete ascent of 657 metres.
Clearly the path to Nirvana is lined with monkey s**t! And there's something deeply uncomfortable walking/wading through it with bare feet. The views at the summit were almost worth the unpleasantness!
Back on the bus and hotel to quickly scrub our feet (a few times), grab our belongings and get on our bikes, our legs already warmed up from the steps.
Just as yesterday was uphill, today was almost exclusively downhill. And as a result we made great progress quickly. We reached our first snack stop after 23 miles, almost before breaking a sweat. The snack stops are always a welcome rest, with Wallace and his team laying on Coke, 100plus, biscuits, crisps, watermelon, bananas: even coffee.
We were warned that we were now entering snake alley, with vipers likely in the undergrowth at the side of the road. Going to the loo won't be an activity for the faint of heart!
We watched a herd of goats negotiate a path through our resting bikes, with the goat herd carrying a kid that looked as if it could only have just been born and the mother leading the mother my the ear.
We pushed on enjoying the cloud cover that sheltered us from the sun's worst impact.
60 kms in and we were treated to a special picnic lunch: avocado and mandarin salad, tea leaf salad with pumpkin seeds, eggplant salad, garlic potato salad and smiled butter fish. All prepared by the fair hands of our multi talented crew.
The final 26km saw the road getting increasingly busy as we cycled past a number of factories and machining plants and we entered the town of Myingyan. We finally arrived at the Kaung Kaung hotel, after an enforced single file policy to negotiate the town.
Once we were reunited with Jim, we started to sing Happy Birthday for the second time, at which point the hotel staff came out with an enormous birthday cake for Bithja. An impromptu birthday celebration continued with the 'road crew' now transformed into boy band, and singing a local song.
The hotel was new. So new in fact that one sensed that the builders had moved out that afternoon, DIY SOS style. Quite a bit of snagging still needed to be sorted. We sat in the courtyard bar amongst the sand piles. But it didn't make the beer any less good.
I suspect the builders' sons had been called into to help with the waiting for dinner. You certainly sensed they hadn't done it before. But the food was good, and the booming acoustic amplified our chatter full of tails of the exploits of our three days cycle that have clocked us to just over 200km and in expectation of the big 100km that awaits tomorrow
No comments:
Post a Comment