Irrawaddy River Myanmar Travel

Tributary sources of the Irrawaddy in the Myanmar Himalayas. The ideal Myanmar trekking adventure places.

The dominant Myanmar represent the tribes that came down from the north following the Ayeyarwady finally to settle in the valley of the great waterway. Their kindred with a lesser heritage are found in the many tribes on their borders. The Mon or Talaing, the people of the south who also are partly in today southern Thailand, were amongst the first of those who came. The Myanmar's drove them before them, as they would probably have been driven themselves in time by the newer Kachin. But the Kachin has recoiled before the might of England, and the tide is now setting back to the first home of all these peoples.

The Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady, then, as it flows ocean ward, ever accompanied by its hills, is symbolic in a profound sense of the history of the land. On the river banks of the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady Mongol traveled and grew up the Burmese civilization with various Chinese and Hindu influence.

Irrawaddy River Vessels at Bagan.

Bagan, one of the old Burmese or Myanmar capitals. The people of Myanmar have become a subject people ; its kings have passed for ever out of the category of sovereign princes. Once more the West has triumphed to the satisfaction of the West, and if there be a far-off divine event ' to the ultimate benefit of the East. Yet no satisfaction can divest such changes of their tragic character. The most callous cannot regard the fall of a nation without some sorrow, or the final extinction of a picturesque Court and of ancient institutions without regret. " Myanmar," in the words of the royal chronicler of China, Myanmar, from the Han dynasty until our day, has existed for over seventeen hundred years, and now alas ! by reason of a few years of tyranny and indiscretion on the part of its monarch, the country has been obliterated in the twinkling of an eye." And after the British colonialists came to Myanmar. Not the least of its many fascinations is the mystery which has shrouded the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river's birthplace. Soon after entering Myanmar it presents the appearance of a stream eight hundred yards in width. That is the farthest knowledge of it possessed by the ordinary traveler. The men who live up there, the Englishmen in Myanmar who rule and fight in the wild border country, know it a little farther, as far up as and beyond the confluence where the N'Maikha and Mlekha, its two main sources, unite. Beyond this point the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady is un navigable, and it has not yet been given to any man to say from the sight of his own eyes whence it comes. The secret of its birth is still in the wilderness of mountains which spreads away beyond the confluence to north and west where the Naga are living. Yet it is being slowly wrested from its keepers. One by one the conjectures hazarded by investigators since the dawn of the nineteenth century have been disposed of one by one the wild frontier tribes are being reduced to subjection, as the growing peace of Myanmar frees the government for exploration and extension towards the north. Its mystery is scarcely any more a mystery, Irrawaddy Map. Thirty miles below the confluence Myitkyina is laid out on the high right hank of the Ayeyarwady - Irrawaddy river. No change can be more significant than the change which the last few years have wrought in the character of Myitkyina. It was once upon a time the last frontier of Myanmar, a military outpost in the heart of the enemy's country. For six months each year it was cut off from nearly all communication. The only approach to it lay by the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river, and the river is no highway at that season. At some river banks gold washer are at work. Myitkyina had to look out for itself, feed itself, and fight upon occasion for its life. One winter it was attacked and burnt down by the hill tribes over the heads of its garrison of a thousand men. Myitkyina is still somehow frontier town, it is still liable to have to fight for its life ; but it is no longer cut off from the rest of Myanmar. It is easily reached by railway at all seasons of the year, and it is becoming a popular stopping-place for the tourist hurrying round the globe. It has all the freshness and charm of a new settlement, and though on the borders of savagery, it is full of life and action and hope. From Myitkyina to the junction with the Mogaung, the Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river flows in a broad clear stream over a pebbled bed. Steaming down-stream in the last days of December one can see the coarse sand churned up from amid the pebbles by the eddying current and glistening like gold in the sunlit waters. The simile is not altogether fanciful, for the gold washer are at work on the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river slopes below Myitkyina. Nearer the shallows which the steamers skirt in their course distinct glimpses can be had into the life of the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river, and great fish may be seen scuttling away in agitation. The Ayeyarwady or Irrawaddy river, though broad and majestic to the eye, is comparatively shallow in its northern reaches, and the navigable channel is narrow. This is made obvious when a bank of yellow pebbles tilts its back half-way across the stream, or a reef Of grey rocks stretches in saw like outline across the ship's course, narrowing the channel to a stream of deep water under the shelter of the opposite bank.

Irrawaddy cruise ancient Sail Boat

The king, with true Buddhist philosophy, when he heard of his brother's advance forbade any resistance. To take life would he wrong and the issue must turn on the extent of his accumulated merit through all past existences. If this were great the threatened evil could not befall him ; were it small it could not he averted. So while the king turned to prayer and good works, his princes and generals stayed their measures for defense, until the usurper swept in on the tide of destiny and seized the kingdom. The king fled, but was pursued overtaken and cast into prison. The queen escaped to the enchanted

mountain Wela, where a son was born to her in her sorrow.

When the little Prince Welatha (" son of Wela ") was six years old he saw his mother in tears and by questioning her learnt that he was a prince and his father a captive. When he was seven his mother yielded to his importunity and sent him with her royal ornaments to visit his father. On approaching Sampenago he met his father being led out to execution. The brave boy stopped the procession and revealed himself, offering to die instead of his father. The king Kuttha thereupon ordered him to be thrown into the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady. But the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river rose in tremendous waves, the earth shook, and the executioners could not for terror obey the royal order. This being reported to Kuttha, he ordered that the prince should be trodden to death by wild elephants ; but the beasts could not be goaded to attack him. A deep pit was then dug and filled with burning fuel, into which the prince was cast ; but the flames came on him like cool water, and the burning faggots became lilies. When Kuttha heard this he grew furious in his rage and had the young prince taken down to the spirit-haunted mountain and cast from the great precipice into the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river, but he was caught up by a Naga and carried away to the Naga country. The earth quaked, many thunderbolts fell, the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady rolled up its waves and broke down its banks. Kuttha was seized with terror, and as he fled forth from the city gate the earth opened and swallowed him up.
It is an interesting feature of many old legends that they enshrine the traditional knowledge of some ancient historical or natural fact, and there is perhaps in this pretty tale the record of some great convulsion, an episode of more than usual moment in the ceaseless conflict between the great Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river and its encompassing hills.

This, the place of the Great Cliff, is the finest portion of the Second Defile. Soon after leaving it the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river sweeps round in more than a semicircle, to emerge once more in untrammeled splendor at the foot of a rounded hill tinted with reddening grass and not unlike an English down.

Below the defile lie the island and village of Shwegu, through the tree­tops of which gleam the golden spires of many pagodas, the centre of a great annual festival attended by many thousands of pilgrims. An island of green and gold set in the folds of a sunlit Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river fading away to steel-blue mist at the threshold of the mountains, on the summits of which an army of opal clouds is enthroned, Shwegu is thrice lovely.

Below the picturesque village of Male, enclosed in a red-thorn stockade, the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river for the third time in its course between the Confluence and the sea forces a right of way through hilly country. Male was once the resting-place of a fugitive queen and for a short time served as a royal capital. In later days it was the Myanmar customs-station on the upper Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river, and in the last days of 1885, when the kingdom of Myanmar was hastening to its end, a fleet of the king's war boats and steamers lay at anchor at Male, in wild hopes of a French advent across the frontiers of Tonquin.

But the French never came as usual and the last of the house of Alompra was already on his way into exile, followed by his weeping wife and a stricken court, before His Majesty's itinerant ambassadors in Europe had concluded their wanderings in search of an alliance. Leaving Male, the Irrawaddy riveror Ayeyarwady river, confined between low hills, flows in tranquil splendor under the shadow of the Shwe-u-daung, whose bare peak and sharp declivities rise majestically into the sky like the Spanish sierras beyond Gibraltar.

The Shwe-u-daung, about 3000 m in height, is the outer citadel of that fortress of magnificent mountains in the chambers of which are treasured the finest rubies of the world. Sixty miles inland, in the beautiful Mogok valley, are the famous ruby mines of Myanmar. The road was rough and steep in my days and for five months each year impracticable for wheeled traffic. At best it was hard going for the long trains of bullock-carts, which creaked and toiled along its ruts, laden with machinery for the mines and all the requirements of a colony of Englishmen planted in a secluded valley sixty miles from a highway of communication. But the traveler on horseback, lightly equipped, made the journey in two days.

Mogok itself, surrounded by magnificent peaks like the Pingubaung, seven thousand feet in height and apt to be transfigured at sunset in a glow of red fire suggestive of their priceless contents, is unique in its seclusion and its world-known fame.

Below the village of Thabeit-kyin, the port of Mogok, on the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady, there is a charming island pagoda and monastery. Once, and it is not many years ago, the monastery was tenanted by an abbot and his monks and acolytes.

Every year at a great annual festival the countryside came over in long boats and dugouts, and the pagoda platform was gay with the brilliance of a Myanmar festival. Monastery spires and columns, the-chapels of the Buddha, and the slopes of the island pagoda, were renovated and gilded with the lavish gold of Burmese Buddhism.

In the still waters of the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river between the island and the near shore, dogfish, tame and gentle from years of immunity, came each day to be fed by the monks, and at the year's festival to be decorated with leaves of gold by the followers of a religion the highest attribute of which is its tenderness for all created life.

For the traveler the pagoda of Thihadaw, with its singular appendage, was one of the most interesting spectacles to be met with on the upper Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river. But a few years have wrought a change which is not without its symbolism.

The island pagoda set in the heart of the third river defile is still beautiful ; but the fingers of decay are busy with its monastery roofs and spires. Its halls and closets lie empty and deserted. The waters of the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river are slowly but certainly eating into the fence of wood and stone, built in an earlier decade to protect the island, and time must bring destruction.

The Myanmar monastery fish, no longer fed by its tenants, no longer protected by their presence from secular attack, have grown wild and timid, and no artifice will now induce them to come when summoned by the familiar call. It is believed that the island, consecrated to religion, can never be flooded, however high the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river may rise. The pagoda is still firm on its base, its buildings are still habitable and yet it is silent and untenanted. No one will say why.

The old monks at Thabeit-kyin shake their heads and mutter impossible reasons ; the fishermen of Thihadaw village say it is because their village has become small. An evil tale of war, which broods sadly over the deserted place, attributes it to another and a harsher cause. But whatsoever the cause the result is there, and in a sense it is symbolic of an inevitable decline.

Fewer monasteries are built now than in years gone by ; fewer scholars chant their lessons in the monastic schools ; everywhere there is a loosening of the bonds of the great religious organization which has ministered so long to the spiritual life of Myanmar.

At Thihadaw the defile grows to greater beauty. The single line of hills which has confined the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river on each hank rises in height and breaks up into a greater variety of groups, through which the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river flows in long reaches and curves as placid and calm as untroubled slumber.

At Kabwet village the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river emerges in a great curve from the midst of the higher hills and widens out, though still restrained for many a mile by low undulating country, beautiful in December with warm autumn hues, till, at Kyaukmyaung, the Third Defile quietly ends. The view, hitherto confined, now broadens out and far ahead on the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river's horizon loom successive spurs of the Shan mountains towering in stately beauty above the distant city of Mandalay.

Here the great defiles of the Irrawaddy river- Ayeyarwady end. The Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river, leaving its infancy and hot strenuous youth behind it, settles down to mature life, till at the delta still many hundred miles distant, its power is broken and lost in the ocean.

The present-day traveler in Myanmar is borne along the great highway under very pleasant conditions. For nine hundred miles the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady Irrawaddy was navigated by the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, most of which have been well equipped with the comforts of civilization.

For purposes of rapid Myanmar travel the fast mail steamers are the more suitable ; but for interest and local color and for the insight they offer into the life of the people, the great Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady cargo boats of the flotilla are to be preferred. To the gay light-hearted Myanmar, whose philosophy is perfect indolence, and to whom time is infinite in its opportunities for doing nothing, the speed of the express steamer is of no attraction.

A Myanmar village which treats the arrival of the mail-packet with calm indifference is plunged into excitement when the hoarse whistle of its slower fellow is borne up the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river. On such occasions Sleepy Hollows where no one appears to have anything to do but doze in a conformable corner or bathe in the cool Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river, attain to a ridiculous energy.

For to every little village along the secluded from the great world beyond it, save in so far as it rests on the shores of the noblest of, highways, the cargo-boats with huge flats in tow mean the advent of news, of gossip, and of trade, things especially dear to the Myanmar woman's heart.

Each week they leave Mandalay, the centre of all things to the Upper Myanmar mind, for the long voyage up the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river to Bhamo, and they bring with them all that a Myanmar heart can desire, all that a Myanmar village cannot furnish, from tinned Swiss milk and potted salmon to silk and pearls.

The process is eminently simple. The cargo-boat and at least one of her flats are partitioned out into stalls which are let for the entire voyage, a matter of a fortnight, from Mandalay to Bhamo and back. But the stall-holders are wisely conservative and retain their stalls for years. In this way they build up a business connection and arc well known in all the towns and villages along the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river.

Thus if the headman, Moung Bah, of Moda village, wishes for a new silk pasoe of the fashionable dog­tooth pattern, or his wife a tamein of the new apple-green and pink tartan, or Ma-Hla, the village belle, a necklace of pearls, they go down to the steamer landing, and with much detail describe their requirements to Ah Tun the Chinaman, or Sheik Ibrahim the Mohammedan trader, whose long grey heard contrasts strikingly with the hairless faces about him ; and in the fullness of time the " fire-boat," trumpeting its advent, brings to each of them his heart's desire.

The transaction, gratifying in itself, is made more so by time. Moung Bah's wish for a fashionable garment was probably inspired by an eloquent hint from the silk dealer, or a glimpse of a Mandalay dandy when the last boat passed through.A week's reflection eked out with clouds of green tobacco smoke and the enthusiastic advice of his neighbors, a calculation of ways and means, have brought him to a pleasant decision before the boat's return down-stream ; and then, the order given, there follows a period of blissful anticipation.

If you are traveling up the Irrawaddy river or Ayeyarwady river in the boat next voyage you will see Moung Bah sitting on his haunches on the high foreshore of Moda village, chewing betel-nut with apparent calm ; and when the boat is run alongside and the lascars plunge overboard into the Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river with a rope to make her fast, and the gangway planks are laid, Moung Bah will walk up gravely to the upper deck and enter into possession of his long-expected purchase.

The deck of a cargo-boat is itself a microcosm of Myanmar life. Down the centre there is the long double line of stalls, back to back, each stall separated from its neighbor by a row of bales or boxes; and in the small square spaces between, the stallholders have their habitation.

Here at all hours you see them seated on gay carpets, reclining on soft quilts, slumbering under silken tartans, flirting, gossiping, smoking contentedly, or playing animated chess.

A Burmese or Myanmar game of chess is an unique entertainment. Everything pertaining to it is of massive proportions. The chessboard is of solid wood nearly two feet square ; the squares look gigantic ; the pieces, rudely carved, are made to stand hard usage, for the Myanmar's throws a curious vigor into his play, each piece being brought down on the board with a sounding thwack. In addition to the players there is always a group of friends and self-constituted advisers round the chessboard.

Each of these takes a keen interest in the game and pours forth his advice with great eagerness. The player, with an amiable superior smile, plays his own game, and when this is at variance with proffered advice each move is followed by long-drawn sounds of pessimistic regret and resolute head-shaking.

One or two spectators who do not understand the game look on in silence, smoking their long green cheroots in a manner suggestive of deep and concentrated thought. The game, in short, is interesting, because there is so much human interest in it.

The flats in tow of a cargo-steamer are occupied as a rule by a poorer class of stallholders than those in the steamer itself. Silks, cotton goods, fur coats, socks, linen, China, pottery, ironware, and the gewgaws of vanity here give way to the necessities of life to salt and onions, piles of imported flour, molasses in little rhomboids like toffee, sugar in crystalline heaps, baskets of potatoes, red and yellow chilies, and raw produce of the most bewildering variety. Most of the stallholders here are women.

The atmosphere is wholly different from that in the adjoining steamer. The curtains are let down and a soft half-light pervades the flat. In the dim vista, broken here and there by bars of light in which the myriad motes riot, women lie asleep resting against soft flour-bags, or sit chatting in undertones in small groups. In this way the hours and weeks pass by, till they grow to years, and in some cases a lifetime.