The Rails To Mandalay (#3 in series)

Bridge maintenance can be a little dicey.

After two hours flying through mist and thick clouds, my plane landed in the market city of Lashio, an anchor point on the Burma Road.  I was there at last!

The only problem was that officials would not let me proceed farther north, to the border with China. Too dangerous, they said at a checkpoint, not recommended for foreigners.  I had to settle for hiring a teenager and riding the route for a few miles on the back of his motorbike.  Even that was cut short as the skies let loose again and we got drenched.

As I always say, if you can't head north, go south.  An extension of Myanmar Railways terminates in Lashio, with passenger service south every day.  I decided to take a route that also had been haunting me since my boyhood, a route fairly dripping with exotic invite -- The Road To Mandalay.  Or in this case, the rails there.

To a few blasts from its horn, the mighty engine approacheth.

Man and mechanism for siding cars.

Children along the way.

A guidebook called it one of the great railway journeys, Lashio to Mandalay. Well maybe, some nice scenery, but it was also a rough one.

Often it was like riding a wild bronc; the cars would go on bucking and bucking and rocking for miles while you held on for dear life.  Luggage on the overhead racks had to be tied down or it'd end up on your head.  You didn't walk the aisle; you staggered it, arms out to the side in case of a sudden lurch or jerk. 

And loud -- with mysterious bangings in other compartments, frequent PHHH-SHISSSHHHH-ings of air brakes, and the screeching of wheels against rails. 

Every few hours the train would stop at a station for twenty minutes or so.  This allowed us to pop off and barter with smiley women smoking cheroots (little cigars), grab a quick meal dished onto a banana leaf or simply jabber with the locals.  Great fun.  More than anything, it was a respite from the mayhem of the train's movement!

One bit of advice:  When the engineers blast that horn, get right back onboard.  They just rev up that big diesel and go.  No other warning.

Plates?  Who needs plates when you've got big leaves of the jungle.

Foliage would scrape by open windows, showering us with leaves, twigs, bugs, etc.

The Goteik Viaduct, components made by Pennsylvania Steel Company.  Quite a thrill crossing this.

As far as language goes, "Mandalay" is one of those names:  It rolls melodiously off the tongue; practically word music tinged with the exoticism of Asia.  Books and movies have been inspired by it.  A casino in Las Vegas has been named similarly -- Mandalay Bay.  And of course, the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, which reads in part...

     On the road to Mandalay,    

Where the flyin' fishes play,

An' the dawn comes up like thunder

outer China 'crost the bay!

Back when schools used to educate people, children would walk around reciting this.  Whoa, I was one of them!  For decades, in fact, I was one of them.  And then a funny thing happened -- I managed to survive that train ride and got there, to the actual place.

As I soon discovered, modern Mandalay is nothing like its reputation.  Most of the old was destroyed by bombings and subsequent fires during World War II. Nor was it particularly old to begin with; only rising up into city status in the mid 1800's.

Furthermore, the Burmese didn't even design the place.  It was laid out by the British in an orderly grid with numbered or lettered streets, with the royal palace at the center.  The layout is more Victorian than it is Asian.

Hulky concrete buildings, often with blackish stains, are the main order of architecture.  Motorbikes blatting about and heaving sidewalks with gaping holes and betel juice spittle make walking an adventure, to put it mildly.  But the city is bustling with trade and commerce, and people go about with a spring in their steps.

I would call it a solid city in the Emerging Asia, prosperous and on the move, with some interesting sights, temples, etc.  Certainly worth a visit if you're in the area.

The clock tower, center-city.

Marketplace.

The view from Mandalay Hill.  Note flatness of city in background.

As for Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the famous verse quoted above...For the information of all hands, there's no bay in Mandalay, no bay for the dawn to rise up like thunder from, like in the poem. The Irrawaddy River, wide, sluggish and filthy, flows nearby, a few lakes dot the region, but that's it.

To hear it from local fishermen, river captains, etc. -- no flying fish either.  And regarding the "...outer-China-across-the-bay" thing, no China either.  That country lies hundreds of miles north.  I had to wonder, what was this guy smoking...or drinking back in 1890?

Before I let him off the hook, one last thing:  Come to find out that Kipling never even got to Mandalay.  In other words, the guy who wrote the poem Mandalay never set foot there.  As a soldier in the British army, he traversed the southern coast, but never got up-country.  

In literature terms, the verses sound good though...good phrasing, powerful imagery.  They've kept people discussing and imagining and perhaps enjoying for a hundred twenty-five years.  So give him that -- a real wordsmith.

This blog, my own version of Mandalay, will never be taught in English classes.  But what the heck, at least I got there.

[PART FOUR TO FOLLOW NEXT WEEKEND]