The bus breaks down over Ponnya [Pic: Wai Yan Hpone]
My muscles ached in protest as I squeezed-in between luggage and other passengers during my bus ride from Mandalay to Hakha, capital of Chin State. We were only a few hours into the drive and it already felt like an ordeal.
The bus was driving along the road to Monywa, a town on the east bank of Chindwin River and I tried to keep myself alert by looking through the window at the desert-like scenes on either side of the road.
And all of us were unimpressed by the tortoise-like pace of our bus. The driver seemed like he knew the road well but the speed at which he was driving was embarrassing; everybody guessed they would miss the scheduled arrival in Hakha the next day.
After a long, boring day’s driving, the bus turned into Chaung Oo-Pakokku, a small road that runs leads off from the main highway. Soon we crossed over the Hsinbyushin Bridge that spans the Chindwin River and entered Magwe division.
As darkness replaced light, our bus sped up and we moved ever closer toward the distant Pondaung and Ponnya mountain ranges in the west.
The road deteriorated the further we went and the man sitting beside me warned me and confirmed my observations.
“It only gets worse from here,” he said. I just shrugged in response – there was nothing I could do but ride it out like everyone else.
And ride over the Pondaung mountain range we did.
It felt as if our bus was a tiny stone stuck in some kind of demented roller coaster that just kept going round and around.
Better yet, our driver had decided that this was the perfect place and time to make up for his earlier slowness by performing his best Schumacher impersonation.
Despite this I managed to drift into an uncomfortable sleep.
A Hakhaian man in his Chin costume
I awoke as the bus stopped in front of a little restaurant to eat a late dinner in Kyaw, a small, sleepy town between the Pondaung and Ponnya mountain ranges; it was about 10:30pm and we were only midway through a long journey.
After dinner we all boarded the bus and I happily retreated back to sleep, until midnight when the bus unexpectedly stopped and the drivers jumped out to investigate.
Once again resigned to my fate I went back to sleep and awoke confused because the bus was still not moving. Still groggy with sleep, I went outside to find out why we weren’t going anywhere.
As the sun’s early rays fell upon us the gaggle of travellers I looked underneath the bus and my eyes were greeted by a discouraging sight – an oil slick – and no drivers in sight.This was a perplexing turn of events.
In the distance I could hear the sound of a train locomotive but it was hidden from view by thick jungle. Happily our drivers returned on the back of a hired motorcycle with tools in hand to find out what had stricken our bus.
While the drivers were busy with the car, the passengers walked along the road back to a nearby village called Kaungton to find a restaurant but found none. But a local family agreed to prepare our breakfast over a fee, and we ate our food in their living room.
Kaungton is a village of ethnic Yaw, who were once Bamar from the Irrawaddy and Chindwin river valleys, who moved to the region centuries ago. They speak a dialect of Burmese, as a result of them being cut off from the mainland Burmese-speaking people for a long time.
We had a chat with our hosts before we walked back to our bus.
After some time tinkering in the engine bay one of the drivers reported that the engine had "cracked" and would need major repairs. Oh brother!
Buses between Mandalay and Hakha only run on alternate days and take Sundays off. Just my luck I thought, it was Sunday. My journey to Hakha would have to wait until a replacement bus from Hakha arrived, supposedly later that day.
We went back to the same family in the village, and asked them to cook our lunch as well.
To pass the time, I began talking with several other passengers and swapped experiences.
“This is just a minor difficulty,” one passenger said. “In the rainy season, landslides sometimes close the road for a week.”
I had known that Chin State is one of the least accessible regions in the country but I hadn’t expected this much trouble. But locals obviously knew better – hardly one vehicle drove past every hour.
So, to kill time I asked an older traveller what the name “Hakha” means.
“In local language, Hakha is actually pronounced and written as Halkha, which means ‘already taken; already occupied’,” he answered. “Legend has it that the founder of the area called it that so that nobody would take his land once he had claimed it.”
Another passenger had been listening and decided to add to our discussion: “Hakha is the Switzerland of Myanmar, you’ll see when you get there.”
I thought that was an odd thing for someone to say but I didn’t have much time to think about it because he hadn’t finished: “You see how this bus is loaded with goods? On the way back it carries almost none,” he explained.
I decided to press him further on this: “Hakha has no products that it sends for sale elsewhere?”
He shook his head and as I looked around everybody else nodded their heads in agreement.
Apparently the only businesses in the region are small and locals believe that agriculture is only successful every third year, which seemed strange to me but I was sure I’d find out more when I arrived. Now all I had to do was wait for the bus…
When I get to Hakha I’m supposed to see that it’s the Switzerland of Myanmar, more like if I get there I thought.
The fading sun cast a pleasant glow over the hills that surrounded our incapacitated bus but a replacement was still nowhere to be seen.
Only then did we learn that our drivers had not actually rung their office in Hakha and asked for a substitute bus when they had gone to the nearest town of Gantgaw that morning. Instead, they had gone in search of a replacement inside the town.
Several passengers were noticeably unhappy with the drivers and scolded them for our predicament but they assured us that a bus was coming.
The temperature steadily dropped as night took hold and a line from a song that someone had sung earlier that day kept repeating through my mind: “This is Chin State, this is not strange at all.”
We huddled in a group around a small fire and a man passed around a mug of whisky for people to sip: My first experience in Chin State was like the whisky – harsh.
The bus had not arrived by 8pm and one of the drivers was about to ride back to Gantgaw to investigate when we heard a vehicle approaching from a distant valley. Relief was visible on the faces of everyone sitting around the fire, especially when the bus arrived soon after.
By the time we had transferred the luggage to the new bus it was 9:30pm but after nearly a day waiting by the roadside it was a relief for the journey to Hakha resume. My relief however, was short lived as the road’s dubious quality quickly made itself known.
Everybody braced themselves against the person beside them the young Chin girl beside me laid her head on my shoulder and went to sleep. My sleep, in contrast, was intermittent.
Despite our relatively ponderous pace, by morning it was obvious that we had already ascended into the high mountains of Chin State. I heard other passengers say that we had passed Bungzung village before dawn, meaning that we had already entered Hakha township; apparently we only had about 40 miles (64 kilometres) to go.
But what a drive!
It was a daunting final leg to say the least. Our truck went up and down the slopes of so many hills, with the road curving like a snake. Sometimes I worried that our truck would overturn and fall off the edge to a certain death.
Even though I had seen no other vehicles as we approached Hakha I knew that at some point we would come across the bus that leaves from the city every Monday morning.
I could barely have been more correct: We did meet and it was a close shave indeed. A head-on collision on a blind corner was prevented only by luck because neither driver had sounded a warning blast, as drivers usually do on such corners.
By now I was extremely tired and running low on patience and my mind screamed: “Take me to Hakha quickly!”
But it wasn’t to be. Even though the final 10-mile (16km) stretch of road was in much better condition than the rest of the road, our bus still got a flat tyre.
“Will I ever get to Hakha in this lifetime?” I thought before that song lyric began to haunt me again.
“This is Chin State, this is not strange at all.”
That lyric was soon drowned out by a song that everybody else began singing and I joined in too.
At 2pm we rounded the crest of Mt Ruam and I had my first sight of the welcoming signs that read: “Hakha, 6120 feet (1865m) above sea level.”
And down the slope we drove to finally – a brutal 48 hours after I had left Mandalay – to enter Hakha, the “Switzerland of Myanmar”.
The weather at that high altitude was nothing like it had been in Mandalay. Every part of my body that was exposed to the wind was quickly numbed by cold. After such a long and painful journey it was a relief to find the city so beautiful and it is a shame that so few visitors from the rest of Myanmar ever travel there. And such low levels of tourism mean the city is largely undeveloped.
I was also surprised to find that over the course of my short stay in the city that many locals hardly speak any Myanmar at all. The locals I asked about this told me that it had only been 10 years since the language was established as the main language at schools.
I was surprised over the course of my stay to see that many locals who do not speak Burmese at all. They said it had only been 10 years since the Burmese language was established at schools. During my stay, I often heard “ka lawm tuk (thank you), na ei cang ma (have you finished your meal?), ka thei lo (I don’t know what you’re saying) and na tha maw (how are you?).
And the food is different too. A local favourite is sabuti – boiled corn and meat – but is as common as mohinga in Yangon or Mandalay.
All too quickly – courtesy of the delays – my time in Hakha was over and it was time for me to head back to Mandalay and I worried about what could befall me on the journey home.
I was still lost in thought as I took my seat on the bus but the man next to me jolted me out of my reverie when he asked if I would return to Hakha.
“Perhaps,” I said with a grin, “if I can come by helicopter.”
Comments
Post a Comment