Cycling Tour Inle Lake

Regardless the quite warm weather, my current travel buddy Tak and I decided to rent a bike and cycle for a 35km roundtrip along the Northern side of the lake.
Once you leave the quite touristic town of Nyaungshwe where we are currently staying the area pretty quickly becomes quite rural. There are moments when you feel like you are send back in time - at least a hundred to hundred fifty years ago from a European perspective. A lot is done by hand and farmers use cows or buffalos to till their fields.
We cycled through small villages, bamboo forests and then took a small boat to set across the lake.
I just love the atmosphere in the areas of the lake that are less touristic - the houses are build on stilts and are often surrounded by floating gardens. The owner's boats are parked in front or under the house and people move around in slim, long motorboats, canoes or rowing boats. As so much is done manually and happens on water the whole life of the villagers seems to be hard work but done in a very calm and focused way.
We had lunch in a family restaurant on stilts that let us observe the beautiful scene around the place - people cooking, washing themselves and clothes in the canal, men crafting bamboo baskets,...Read more