Cycling around Inle Lake – Myanmar

After Bagan, I hopped on a “luxury” bus which was in fact, a very small minibus with broken seats, an inexplicable amount of mosquitos, no air conditioning and a rather sweet local family piled onto the seats next to me. Whilst they were lovely, there were more of them than there were seats, and the wife was sick throughout more or less the entire journey.

Upon arriving, (and after that horrendous journey) I really didn’t feel much like doing anything and spent the rest of the day evening hiding in my air-conditioned room with a book and napping.

The next day I went out with some people from the hostel and rented some (pretty shoddy) bicycles to cycle around Inle Lake. Well, we didn’t cycle the entire lake because it’s a pretty damn large lake and Myanmar is very hot.

but we did cycle around half of the lake. We went on the Tofu Palace Tour in a small local village near the hot springs (because like fuck did I fancy a dip in some hot springs after cycling uphill in 40 C heat)

(You can read more about the tour in my next post)

and then we piled ourselves and our bicycles into a small wooden boat, and zipped across the lake, with cool water splashing our faces.

We Zig-zagged through a water village, the wooden houses standing on stilts above the surface of the lake

and then jumped off on the pier on the other side, facing this stunning lush green backdrop…

There’s green all around, in front of us are green rolling hills, and below our feet swamps of green float on the water

We stopped for a refreshing drink at a cafe on the pier, taking advantage of it’s shady spots

and then rode back to the hostel to collapse into a hot sweaty mess.

Although a lot of people have negative things to say about Inle Lake and how touristy it has become, and whilst to some extent I agree, on a sunny day like this – it’s easy to see why it’s so popular.

The surrounding countryside is beautiful, particularly at this time of year, when the heavy rainfall has really brought all the plants to life.

I mean, that’s not a view you could get tired of quickly is it?