The colours of Myanmar

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Yangoon - Bagan, after a short night's rest is essential, at 6 am we meet at the airport. The area of the domestic departures is a shabby big room smell of stale spices which is like the leitmotif of much of south-east Asia. In the apparent chaos of passengers and luggage, which resembles a courier station '50s, the boat is surprisingly fast.
With a short flight and quiet, the Fokker's Air Bagan us to Bagan. From above, the site is appealing: in the forest green and lush stands of hundreds of red pagodas. The archaeological site, dating from the twelfth century, is constantly threatened by forest, precariously stemmed from the efforts of UNESCO, but the wild, overflowing vitality of nature, with its deadly threat, giving a soul in the place of subtle melancholy that as a living organism, is precariously balanced on a thin ridge of shadows. It seems incongruous that foreigners appear to be more sensitive all'afflato panic and numinous expiring dall'intrico brick and roots. Our guide, for example, appears not to appreciate any difference between the temples wretched tin and cement, ramshackle centunculi of subculture, and the charm of authentic religious inspiration rooted in the soul and folk history. So, rather than materially poor, Myanmar seems spiritually deprived, dispossessed of his past, that awareness of historical, religious, cultural, alone, protects from accepting foreign indiscriminate junk and the cancellation of the artistic and aesthetic coherence without which there can survive the ability to recognize and preserve the beauty.

Keng Tung:
Today trekking touch 4 villages with a wide turn into the forest. The walk is beautiful and announcing interesting path, sometimes inaccessible, is of red earth and the surrounding lush forest. Seems to tread the path of Ho Chi Min
The villages give us an impression of authenticity, perhaps never experienced: they are genuine community cut off by time, living in piles of straw and bamboo, they have Homeric sense of hospitality and ancient farming practice, integrated from the farming of chickens and pigs. Women have beautiful headdress, covered with beads and silver coins, apparently uncomfortable and heavy, the children swarm, entrusted to the benevolence of nature as the broods of chicks. Donate candy, toothbrushes, medication to relieve pain caused by heavy farm work, but we have the impression, however disturbing harmony of life, our being irretrievably alien, no less than if we had landed from a spaceship.

Inle Lake:
we rise before dawn, after a sleep disturbed by the background of the rain. Fortunately, the weather threat but holds up while browsing the market of "5 days", which, by chance, is held in a location far enough away.
The market is fascinating. On the muddy shore crowd by ox-carts, canoes, large and small banks and many different vendors of different ethnicities, each with different shapes and colors in clothing. There are makeshift huts with food and beverage outlets, already crowded with customers, there are those who ensures a naive but popular entertainment with a primitive device that rolls two huge dice, which allow a large crowd to join the game, and we are sellers of items that also affect us, like daggers, wooden sculptures, jewelry, paintings and antiques, more or less fake. However, we have fun, shop and run away, chased by sellers stubborn right into the water.
Through villages on stilts browsing channels barely kept free from the invasion of lotuses and water hyacinth, which are capable of stopping tangles and dumping a boat on the lake there are floating islands and large areas planted with vegetables that a ' small piece of turf, water stops, there are workshops and craft activities of various kinds who make, obviously, benefit from tourism. We visit a cigar factory, a forge, where the hot iron is beaten by hammers, vibrating strokes of workers in risky and coordinated basis, while an old man sitting on top, with the work of the arms alternating sets in motion the bellows; watched the show, truly amazing, the creation of a tissue from the stem of a lotus. The stem, broken by the hand of the spinner, sounds thin filamentous mucilage cobwebs, skilful fingers twisted to form a thread, which is quickly wrapped around a spool and then is spun and woven by hand to form a fabric from ' looks rough, but, to the touch, soft and supple as silk.