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The road to Mandalay is in fact a river, and a world traveler
is transported back in time upon it, thanks to an eponymous riverboat.
By Roy Attaway — Spring 2004
When we first saw The Road
to Mandalay, she was snugged against the soft ochre bank of the
Irrawaddy River in central Burma, tethered to trees by thick hawsers.
Women from the nearby village of Pagan were bathing and washing clothes
in the sluggish water under her bows. The boat struck us—my wife
Robyn and me—as precisely what we needed to slake an unquenchable
thirst for the fresh, the exotic.
We hurried aboard, greeted by the crew in spotless white
uniforms, and stowed our gear in our cabin, an indication of the luxury
in which we were to pass through veils of time.
The Road to Mandalay
was built for service on the Rhine as a small cruise ship. She was refitted,
shipped to Burma (now Myanmar) for finishing, and began a new career as
a floating passport to adventure. For the next several days, she was our
personal palace from which we would explore parts of the countryside.
On our first day, Robyn and I arose at dawn, not wanting
to miss a single moment. We sank into the thick cushions under the pool
deck awning and sipped hot, rich tea while watching and listening to the
river. Small ferry boats crisscrossed the turgid brown surface, music
came from a copse of trees in a settlement on the bank, and we could hear
the adzes and hammers from a local shipyard.
Once we were underway, the captain carefully moved the
boat against the current. It was December, the beginning of the dry season,
and the river was low, exposing extensive sandbars where whole seasonal
communities had sprung up. Some of the people had come to farm the rich
alluvial soil; others were dredging the silt for gold washed down from
the Tibetan Plateau.
The Burmese Waterways Department guarantees a channel
depth of five feet, which is what the Mandalay draws. Still, the channel
itself is unpredictable, and the boat made odd twists and turns midriver
to accommodate it. There was much southbound traffic, including many tows
with loads of teak.
For Robyn and me, this was our own nirvana. We never
tire of sitting on deck of this or any riverboat and watching the world
go by, reading, looking for birds like the iridescent kingfisher, a flying
jewel. There were cormorants as well, and lesser fish eagles and birds
too swift to identify. Coming back to the boat the evening before, we
had flushed two nightjars (local nocturnal birds) from the sandy ruts.
>> Next page >> Part
2: The light, in fact, throughout the river valley was the most beautiful
I’ve ever seen, a simmering golden hue. Page
1,
2, 3
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