A thin mist broke over pale green rice fields in a wet hill-wrapped bowl in the Shan Highlands of northern Burma. An ox chewed its cud. Smoke rose from bamboo huts on the fringes, and longyi-clad men swung slow-motion sickles in garden plots. From over the next hill came the plaintive cry of the train from Mandalay, winding laboriously from village to village, overloaded with...
Endless dunes shimmered beneath a heat haze. We wound around them at a plodding camel’s pace, roped together in a caravan that evoked images of Silk Road trading expeditions. Sand blew up and swirled into my eyes; it crunched between my teeth and coated my lips. I pulled my broad hat down low and tied a bandanna across my mouth and nose. Beneath a long sleeved white shirt my arms were...
Sunlight slants through verdant jungle and illuminates a simple white painted tomb on a hillside overlooking the Nam Khan River. Someone has hacked back the growth to open a view of the smooth brown waters, but vines are encroaching yet again. A square brass plaque, tarnished by constant moisture, reads simply “Henri Mouhot 1826-1861”. Mouhot is credited with “re...
Camped in a valley of rolling green hills that look manicured like a golf course, patched with pine forest. The only sounds are the wind as it sighs through the trees, the grunt of grazing horses, and the baa-ing of a flock of sheep. The slow scratch of my pen on paper drowns them all out. The white gers of herdsmen dot the hillside across the valley. Next to one, a pale blue...
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