Monywa - Burma by Bike

Today’s schedule was overambitious, too much sightseeing and not enough cycling.  Alex, the tour leader is desperate to deliver all the visits, but knew that it couldn’t be done in the time, so reduced the cycling from 50km to 20km and increased the amount of bus time.  I can understand why he did it, but clearly someone at Exodus needs to have another look at the schedule.  To add insult to injury, we also arrived late at the hotel which was one of the best on the trip.  

 

Sunrise at the U Bein Bridge

The day started very early with another visit to U Bein Bridge near Mandalay to try and catch a sunrise.  The sun was a little later than anticipated (can the sun be late?) and this put us behind schedule.

Mandalay - Burma by Bike

Mandalay is the second largest city in Myanmar and felt busy and dirty after the relative emptiness of the Shen Highlands.  The morale of the group definitely dropped a notch and wasn’t helped by a cramped city centre hotel that seemed a little neglected (apparently the usual hotel was fully booked).  

U Bein Bridge

Despite it’s size Mandalay was only established in the mid-19th century when the then king decided to make it his royal capital.  Dominating the centre is a huge fort with outer walls over 2,000m long with a surrounding moat 65m wide.  The British arrived 25 years after its construction, and ‘relocated’ its treasures to the Victoria and Albert museum.

Shan Highlands - Burma by Bike

Crossing the Shan Highlands via Pindaya takes two days and they are the toughest of the whole trip. 

 

An easy stretch through the Shen Highlands

After an easy 18km (along the same road as Day 2), the Day 4 route climbs for about 350m up a hillside and the ‘king of the mountains’ is identified.  Needless to say it wasn’t me (I nearly killed myself coming third) but the guy who came second was 75 and later told me that he regretted the fact that he had only recently started cycling!

Inle Lake - Burma by Bike

After a brief overnight stop in Rangoon, an early morning internal flight, the holiday starts in earnest with three nights in Nyguanshwe a bustling town immediately to the north of the Inle Lake.

Early morning departure

The lake is one of Myanmar's most important tourist attractions and large new developments in the surrounding hills suggest an explosive growth of interest. Perhaps the most iconic attraction are the fisherman on the lake who guide their boats standing up and with a leg wrapped around an oar. The towns around and on the lake are built on stilts and support a population of some 70,000 who make a living from tourism, fishing and agriculture. The agriculture is particularly interesting with tomatoes and other vegetables growing on beds of water hyacinths floating on the lake. The agriculture is relatively recent, only started in the 1960s, and agriculture and population growth is threatening the survival of the lake and the very thing that attracts the tourists. Tourists and products to sustain them are ferried around the lake at great speed in long narrow canoes powered by ancient diesel engines. It's an amazing place but with an uncertain future.

Burma by Bike

In January 2014 we went on our first ever organised cycling tour.  We enjoyed the trip to SW India so much that we decided to repeat the experience in 2015 with a similar trip to Myanmar (Burma). Read on to see if the second trip was as good as the first.

A Circular Walk from Arundel

This is one of my favourite local walks.  If it was a real ale it would be called something like ‘Old Dependable’, I’ve walked it dozens of times, it’s familiar and never disappoints.  It starts and finishes in Arundel, takes you through wooded parkland, crosses the meandering River Arun (twice), traverses classic high chalk downland, and swoops back to Arundel along a lovely dry valley.  It’s just a shade under 19kms long, can be completed in under five hours and is just tough enough to justify a couple of pints or so of genuine real ale in Arundel before returning to Brighton (or wherever).

To be honest it does challenge the number No 2 ‘Walks from Brighton Rule’ (you have to be able to get to and from the walk from Brighton by public transport) as it takes nearly an hour to get there on either bus or train (you can get there nearly as quickly from London).  It’s not that far as crow flies but if you go by train you have to change at Ford and the bus option, the ‘Coastliner 700’ is even less direct.  When I had a car the rule could easily be ignored but no longer.

Circular Walks in the Vall de Boí

Walking in the Vall de Boí is really well organised and most people will find enough to keep busy for 2/3 days within the confines of the valley itself.  Visiting the Romanesque churches provides a series of mini objectives and with bars and restaurants in all the villages there are also plenty of places to stop and relax.

The paths themselves are wonderful. In nearly all cases, they are based on the original inter settlement routes and are as old as the villages themselves.  Designed for pack horses/ponies as well as pack people they are perfectly graded and walking along them is a real pleasure.

Depending on how much time you spend in the churches (they are not that big) you can get around the valley in 9/10 hours. It's a challenge, but not quite as mad as it sounds as the paths are so easy and such a pleasure stopping is a problem.