Day 170: Finishing the Hike

Thankfully there were no roosters in this village! Not much of a sleep-in though, as the host family starts stirring basically as soon as it gets light. Breakfast at 7am which again was delicious and hearty, then we said a fond farewell to our host family and hit the road just after 8am.

Today was the day showing why almost everyone hikes from Kalaw to Inle Lake, rather than the other direction - it was almost entirely downhill. The first hour or so was tough, down into a valley and then a long steep hill up the other side. But after this we were on a fire trail-type road (probably a main road for the area) for another hour which was a very gradual descent.

We had a mid-morning break at a teahouse where we all loaded up with tea and the French Canadians shared a couple of beers - of course! From here we veered away from the road and plunged down into a long valley. Muddy in places as it didn't get much sunlight, and overall the scenery wasn't anywhere near as nice as the previous day.

Still some farms around but mostly it was craggy hills and bushland. It actually felt a little bit Australian, since the hills were fairly rounded, the trees are rounded rather than pointy European/North American pine trees, and everything looked very dry. We could also see the lake in the distance which kept us going!

Lots of downhill, sometimes steep and sometimes not, but constantly descending. Eventually we came down from the hills and emerged onto a large wide floodplain facing the lake. The final stretch! We walked a couple of kilometres through some outlying villages and eventually arrived at our final destination, a lunch restaurant, aside a small canal just after 12pm. We'd made it!

According to my GPS tracker, we'd done about 32 kilometres of hiking since 8am the previous day. Not bad at all!

Lunch was fried noodles again with more amazing guacamole, then we boarded a pair of boats to take us to the main Inle Lake town, Nyaungshwe. It was a surprisingly long ride, over an hour! The boats are fairly small, basically oversized canoes with a diesel engine and a propeller shaft, but at least they have seats for the Westerners (ones carrying locals don't have seats, and carry way more people).

Got dropped at the dock and said some fond goodbyes, before we hobbled over to our accommodation about 5 minutes walk away. My left big toe was giving me a bit of grief - I'd damaged the nail several months ago (constantly wearing thongs on terrible Asian footpaths mean you're constantly at risk of kicking/stubbing etc) and the constant downhill from today had put a lot of pressure on it.

Thankfully our room was large and probably the fanciest we'd had in Myanmar so far. Great quality shower with good heat and pressure, and the wifi seemed decent too. Even had a swimming pool! Our luggage had been couriered from the Kalaw hotel by the trekking company, so all that remained was for us to have a lovely mid-afternoon shower, then lie around in bed recovering for the rest of the day.

After sunset we walked a few blocks up the road to a place called Chillax Bistro, where they served 2000 kyat ($2 AUD) cocktails and good quality burgers. So we had a couple of burgers and some cocktails. Bed pretty early tonight, but we're looking forward to a relaxing few days at the lake!Read more