Step Back in Time:

Cruising Myanmar’s Inle Lake Time stands still at Inle Lake in central Myanmar’s Shan Hills. KATIE ROBERTS explains why this stunning region deserves a place on your bucket list – and how to see it in style at a new resort.

Cruising Myanmar’s Inle Lake

For years, my plan to visit Myanmar was thwarted by unforeseen events, so when I finally found myself standing on the tarmac at tiny Heho Airport with hubby Sean (and the kids safely with their grandparents), I was feeling very pleased with myself. Door- to- door, the journey took almost a day, but leaving urban Singapore at 8am and arriving at this rural lake by 4pm was utterly worth it. And the best bit? You can visit any time of the year – summer and winter are equally appealing and enjoyable.

SEE: Life on the Lake

Mellow and uncontrived, Inle Lake is home to tens of thousands of residents who, apart from having adopted boat engines and mobile phones, follow a traditional lifestyle. Being 22km from north to south and 12km from east to west, the lake can really only be explored by boat, and preferably one with a motor rather than oars, although the latter is of course more relaxing – for the passenger, anyway.

There’s much to see on a one-day trip around Inle Lake, including the Intha fishermen who have traditionally rowed their wooden canoes with one leg wrapped around the oar to leave their hands free for fishing and managing their conical fishing nets. An image of one of these men, backlit by a glorious sunrise, has made the region justifiably famous, and is just as impressive to see in person.

Our itinerary included a look at the floating gardens, a term that fails to evoke the huge scale of the thousands of acres of tomatoes, chillies and flowers that seemingly float on the lake surface. These gardens are an important source of food and income; mud is dredged from the bottom of the lake and piled onto bamboo sticks that are lashed together to form a bed thick enough to support trellises. While the long-term sustainability of this agricultural practice is in question, it’s an impressive sight, especially when villagers row in and out between the lines of plants to harvest their crops.

Inle’s “five-day market” is held in five different locations over five days. No matter where you visit (we caught the action at Nam Pan), it’s a haven for souvenir hunters and photographers seeking to snap local people doing their shopping. The market stocks everything from locally made cigarettes to food, clothes, boat parts and household supplies; villagers pack their purchases securely into long-tail boats before motoring home to their stilt houses.

Cottage industries abound on and around the lake, and opportunities to observe craftsmen at work are included in many tours. It’s impossible not to admire the skill and patience that goes into lotus-silk weaving, bamboo crafts, umbrella-making, cigarette-making, metalworking (knives), boat-making, and silver-smithing – and there are numerous opportunities to purchase souvenirs.

Cultural and religious sites abound: they include Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda, a massive Buddhist temple; Nga Phe Chaung Monastery, famed for its jumping cats; and Inthar Heritage House, renowned for its art gallery, hotel training school and Burmese cat breeding centre (unfortunately closed on the day we tried to visit).

If there’s a must- visit, it’s the Indein Pagoda. This ramshackle complex of a thousand Shan stupas dating from the 14th to the 18th century rises higgledy-piggledy up a hill. Those at the top are adorned in gold and silver, and with hundreds of tiny bells that chime in the wind. There were few tourists the day we visited, and it felt otherworldly; almost as if Buddha himself was blowing the breeze. We spent a good hour scrambling amongst the older, more dilapidated stupas, and we braved the weeds to snap some Indiana Jones-worthy photos.

We managed to fit all that in with a leisurely stop for lunch before motoring back to the jetty at Sanctum by about 3pm. The fascinating tour was arranged by the hotel and at US$35 was absolutely value for money. If we’d had another day, we could have headed further south and explored more of the lake.