Kakku and the Heho airport

I wanted to say a little bit more about the luxurious Inle Resort. I guess that’s because it was such a change in accommodation after two nights of homestays in the mountains around Inle.

Our arrival was by boat, though the resort is on the shores of Inle Lake and was not on stilts but upon land. The service was excellent and the grounds were exquisite. We stayed in an individual cabin with two large rooms – living room and bedroom, with a spacious sink area, and additional rooms for the toilet and a generous shower room. (Did I mention hot water? Hot water is so great.) The dining facility was a separate huge building and the breakfast buffet was included with our room.

After checking out we had breakfast then waited for our driver. Before leaving Hein yesterday, we had asked him to help us arrange for a driver. It was a great decision by Margaret to have someone handle the driving for us today because we covered a lot of territory and trying to navigate it all by bus would have been maybe crazy, maybe impossible. If we had rented a car, we never would have found the stupas at Kakku.

I had to look up the word. “Stupa” simply means heap, or pile. The word in this case refers to a small pagoda built over a relic. At Kakku there are 2,478 stupas together. The Internet site we referenced to find this place says, “some are simple and unadorned while others are covered in a riot of stucco deities and mythical beasts.” It’s a great description.

There is a temple on the grounds, but since Margaret and I did not wear a long skirt and had our shoulders exposed, we could not go in. But the woman who took the entrance fee assured us that we were dressed appropriately enough to wander the stupas. We did remove our shoes, of course.

Each stupa is itself fascinating. Though we passed thousands of them, they continued to catch our attention. The many styles we saw are attributed to the changing styles of architecture through the years as more were constructed. We didn’t see any new stupas going up, but many of them were undergoing renovation. Some were shaped like buildings, mausoleum style we thought, and housed multiple Buddhas typically.

After the stupas we wandered the little market out there. Kakku is very rural, and there didn’t appear to be a town. The market held about thirty stalls, all selling the exact same things. These included sunflower seeds, rice cakes, fava beans, dried corn, garlic, ginger, and a bunch of stuff we couldn’t identify. There were a couple of textile stalls as well, and a couple of small convenience stores.

We returned to our driver, Aung Ku Zin, who had been waiting in the shade for us the whole time. He is a friendly man and a remarkably safe driver. He also used some English to explain some of the sights we passed such as garlic fields and the Taunggyi University. Our trip from the resort to Kakku was 1 ½ hours, and the trip from Kakku to the Heho airport was two hours. We had the opportunity to see much more of the Myanmar countryside, this time Shan State in particular. We particularly enjoyed seeing the people we passed on the road, women often riding side saddle on bikes, bikes loaded down with incomprehensibly large loads, a truckload of ducks, trucks filled with people and more people on top. There are no lanes, and there is a natural flow of faster vehicle passing slower vehicles while looking out for oncoming traffic on the single lane strip of pavement.

The road was always in pretty good shape. A single lane of blacktop down the middle is flanked by the red dirt of this area. Most of the time there was enough room for automobiles to creep past each other and not leave the pavement. Most of the vehicles in this area are motorbikes, unlike Yangon, where we were surprised not to see many bicycles or motorbikes in the three days we were in the massively congested city. We agreed that motorbikes made a lot more sense in Yangon than their huge American-sized trucks and SUVs. In the city of Taunggyi we were impressed with the wide roads in good repair, often bordered by attractive roadside landscaping. We were also impressed with how clean and organized everything appeared. After the chaos of Yangon, I admit we were surprised to find a city like this in Myanmar.

The tiny little Heho airport runs smoothly, and it was a piece of cake to get our boarding passes. We have a short flight to Bagan. I suspect that once the flight lands, and we get to our hotel, and then find a place to eat dinner, that will be the extent of our adventures today.