| |
Irrawaddy
Cruise Burma
Cruises
|
|
Myanmar
river cruise Burma cruises
|
 |
|
- A
Irrawaddy cruise
would be the best
means of travel in Myanmar would it be available
but it is not. There is a short version
restricted between Bagan and Mandalay. Since the
Myanmar rivers are only maintained at a very
level ship moving is restricted because of
continuously shifting sandbanks.
With smaller ships
it could be done, here is a Myanmar river travel
report coming down from the north. At frequent
intervals the hills send down their tribute to
the river in streamlets that babble over great
polished boulders and gleam and sparkle in the
sunlight. This is their season of security and
charm. In the rain season their music swells to
a deafening roar as they rush down in cataracts,
bringing with them, in helpless chaos, boulders
and trees and sand. Near the lower end of the
defile the river, winding a narrow and sinuous
course through the rocks known as the Elephant,
Cow, and Granary, enters on one of its most
exquisite passages.
The rocks fancifully
so named stretch across in a broken line from
shore to shore. For half the year they are
covered, but in winter they lie exposed,
glistening in the sun and revealing the true
width of the channel, here scarcely more than
eighty yards across, but of unfathomed depth.
Their sheer bare sides, of a polished grey-green
hue, afford no footing for life ; but on their
rugged summits the receding river leaves a thin
deposit of rich silt, in which tussocks of vivid
grass find a home, their lively beauty enhanced
by their grim setting. In the days soon after
the war, when the channel was less known, a
small steamer came to a violent end amid these
dangerous reefs, which in the flawless calm of a
winter afternoon present an aspect of placid
beauty. |
|
Below the Elephant
and Cow the little hamlet of Tamangyi shows out
from the leafy hillside, and the river, freed
from its iron fetters, lengthens out into a long
dreamy reach in which the varied hills and woods
and the opalescent clouds that trail like the
pinions of another world overhead, attain
redoubled beauty. A moment, and the dream sweeps
by, the great curtain of the hills folds swiftly
back, revealing a distant glimpse of the Shan
mountains ; and the waters, sparkling in the
broad sunlight, seem visibly to rejoice at the
termination of their long and arduous passage
through the territories of the First Defile.
Myanmar river cruise
wont see a lot,
there are no much signs of life. An occasional
boat or dugout, a thatched hut high up on the
steep declivities, at the lower end some
blue-coated Chinese Shan quarrying for stone, a
rare pagoda ; such are the faint symptoms of
man's dominion. For the rest, a startled otter
on the rocks ; a white-headed fish-eagle with
keen gaze intent on his prey ; a cormorant
poised on a stake and drying his dripping wings
with obtrusive philosophy ; a panther swimming
hurriedly for life across the fast-flowing river
; the short, quick call of barking deer, or the
sullen roar of a tiger making off, up one of the
leafy watercourses. All else is loneliness and
solitude. Leaving the hills, the river spreads
out to ambitious dimensions,
|
Myanmar
River Cruise |
|
and flowing past the
site of ancient Sampenago, receives before it
reaches Bhamo the tributary waters of the
Taping.
The Second Defile, a few miles below Bhamo we
are leaving behind it a great mass of Myanmar
mountains, gliding into the gorge known as the
Second Defile. There are no signs here of a vast
accumulation of waters similar to that at the
mouth of the defile above. The channel, broader
and less obstructed, offers a more adequate
highway, and the river is less turbulent in its
entry. Yet on all sides there is grim testimony
to its power in the pedestals of the surrounding
hills, torn, contorted into the most fantastic
patterns, and swept bare of every vestige of
life to a height of thirty feet.
It is this sense of
conflict between elemental forces which, felt
intensely here, makes the Second Defile a great
spectacle. Near the northern entrance a mighty
cliff which turns its worn face to the river
speaks with eloquence of the conflict. It rises
sheer into the sky from the water's edge, eight
hundred feet from its massive foundations made
smooth by the constant friction of the speeding
river, to the delicate clustering bamboos on its
summit. Round its base graceful creepers climb
and hang in festoons amid the branches of noble
trees. A pagoda in miniature, one of the
smallest of the myriads which taper heaven ward
in this land of religion, crowns the top of a
small rock at its foot. Its diminutive size
throws into relief the great rock scared with
the stress of centuries, which towers
majestically above it. An instinctive hush
settles down on the ship as we race under its
shadow, and there is deep silence in the gorge,
broken only by the steady paddle-throbs which
echo through it like mysterious heart-beats. In
this battle-chamber of nature, stamped with the
records of a long unceasing strife, the soul of
the spectator shrinks into itself, finding no
vent in the commonplace.
|
Burma cruises |
This, the place of
the Great Cliff where Burma cruises must pass,
is the finest portion of the Second Defile. Soon
after leaving it the river sweeps round in more
than a semi circle, 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
tree tops 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 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.
|
|
Our Irrawaddy cruise
reaches the Third
Defile, the river's course is uneventful, save
where, encircling many islands, it receives from
China the many-mouthed homage of the Shweli. Yet
it never ceases to be beautiful. At evening the
sun sinks behind the clear-cut amethyst hills in
a blaze of gold, and the hues of sunset pervade
the still reaches, slowly changing like chords
of some divine music till they pass
imperceptibly away into the dusk of twilight.
Later the stars shine out in the clear winter
sky and their light, like quivering
spear-points, plays on the face of the waters,
hastening on to their union with the sea. The
Great Bear climbing the heavens, points coldly
northward, where imagination pictures the snows
of aeons lying on the summits of mountains on
which man has left no footprint. Near by the
lights of a small village die out one by one,
and a great and brooding silence falls upon
hillside and plain. It is midnight on the
Irrawaddy or Ayeyarwady river.
Below the
picturesque village of Male, enclosed in a
red-thorn stockade, this Myanmar 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 Burmese
customs-station on the upper river, and in the
last days of 1885, when the kingdom of Burma 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,
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 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,
nine thousand feet 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.
|
Mogok Myanmar 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.
The island pagoda
set in the heart of the Third 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 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 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 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. At Thihadaw the defile
grows to greater beauty. The single line of
hills which has confined the river on each hank
rises in height and breaks up into a greater
variety of groups, through which the river
wanders in long reaches and curves as placid and
calm as untroubled slumber.
|
|
At Kabwet village the 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 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 - Ayeyarwady river end.
The 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.
For nine hundred
miles the Irrawaddy - Ayeyarwady Irrawaddy river
is navigated by the ships of various sizes since
shifting of sandbanks is a continuous problem.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
