56 images Created 2 Jun 2014
Myanmar - Burma by Train
One thing that I was looking forward to in Myanmar was travelling by train, because it has been many years since I last experienced train travel in a developing country. Trains have always been my favourite mode of transportation. The epic train journeys during my first trip to India and Pakistan in 1973, with all of the chaotic hustle and bustle of life in the overcrowded trains and stations, are forever etched in my memory. Not long after returning from my overland journey to India I was employed by a private steam railway in the UK, working on track maintenance alongside people who were devotees of the world of trains past and present.
Many years have passed since being submerged in a tangled mass of legs and bodies on those Indian trains, but train travel in Myanmar still retains a similar sense of total cultural immersion, when you are just as likely to be sharing a carriage with chickens and baskets of agricultural produce as people, and the schedule is often dictated by how long it takes to get the goats on board. Vendors of all description invade the carriages at every stop where the platforms also serve as makeshift markets for local produce. The trains are usually very slow and so bumpy that they often feel as if they are running on square wheels. I can never forget watching a vendor preparing a cup of coffee for me while he was anchored to the floor of the convulsing carriage, and with arms fully extended and a precision gimballed action he proceeded to pour the coffee from one cup to another without spilling a drop. Then when he passed it to me it suddenly became as animated as the train, and I grappled to tame it as I started bouncing up and down in my seat as if I was riding a bucking bronco. The trains run on narrow gauge tracks ascending into the hill districts, and the motion is much more from lateral than vertical, and their violent swinging motion makes you wonder how they can still remain on the tracks, and apparently derailments are fairly common.
Many years have passed since being submerged in a tangled mass of legs and bodies on those Indian trains, but train travel in Myanmar still retains a similar sense of total cultural immersion, when you are just as likely to be sharing a carriage with chickens and baskets of agricultural produce as people, and the schedule is often dictated by how long it takes to get the goats on board. Vendors of all description invade the carriages at every stop where the platforms also serve as makeshift markets for local produce. The trains are usually very slow and so bumpy that they often feel as if they are running on square wheels. I can never forget watching a vendor preparing a cup of coffee for me while he was anchored to the floor of the convulsing carriage, and with arms fully extended and a precision gimballed action he proceeded to pour the coffee from one cup to another without spilling a drop. Then when he passed it to me it suddenly became as animated as the train, and I grappled to tame it as I started bouncing up and down in my seat as if I was riding a bucking bronco. The trains run on narrow gauge tracks ascending into the hill districts, and the motion is much more from lateral than vertical, and their violent swinging motion makes you wonder how they can still remain on the tracks, and apparently derailments are fairly common.
