Thandaunggyi

Mya, my hostess in Pindaya, had warned me : "between Loikaw and Taungoo you'll have to take a bus. These are real mountains. Too difficult with your bicycle". The first day, I congratulated myself for not having listened to her. Despite the dark threatening clouds and the steep slopes, the site was amazing and I was just enjoying being here amid this beauty ! At night, I was also hosted in an original place, but you will read this in an upcoming post... 😊
The second day, I realized that she might have been right. Forced to get down from my bicycle and to push it on never-ending slopes, in heavy rain and hail that drenched me to the skin within seconds, I was starting to feel desperate, wondering how I was going to pass through these mountains... But then, at the exact moment when despair was growing overwhelming, a truck driver stopped and waved me to embark with him !

Well, when you don't have the strength to push anymore and wonder how you will camp in this rain, you do not hesitate for long. Nevermind the third day of cycling in the hills that I was suppose to do.
I was lucky to be found here : few cars and even less trucks were riding this road. With "Aung hoï", the driver, we could not really communicate, besides a few mimes and smiles. But I understood from his gestures that he liked biking too and that he had been driving for tol many hours already (only a mix of betel, cigarettes, beer and heavy horn-blowing seemed to keep him awake...).

80 km were left to reach Taungoo. They took us 6 hours. This must be commonplace in Myanmar but in my eyes, the truck was falling into pieces. Neither my door nor my window could open from the inside, my seat was... horizontal (I had to prop it up against my piled-up luggage to keep it straight). More alarming maybe, the lights went on and off all the time, Aung hoi had trouble moving the gear stick and we had to stop regularly, to wait for the motor oil temperature to cool down...

But we made it ! I invited Aung hoi at a restaurant and proposed to give him money for the ride, but he refused both. While I was back on the road with my bicycle, he bade farewell with a last deafening (but well-intended) horn blow. Sweet guy.
In the end, I only rode around 140 km during these 2 days. Enough to make me sleep like a log in the uncomfortable nighttrain I took that same night to Bagu. Planned arrival time : 3.30 am...Read more