{"id":11090,"date":"2015-05-17T06:01:07","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T00:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.paintedstork.com\/blog\/?p=11090"},"modified":"2015-05-21T11:40:05","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T06:10:05","slug":"myanmar-pao-people-inle-lake-shan-hills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/2015\/05\/myanmar-pao-people-inle-lake-shan-hills.html","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar – PaO people near Inle Lake – Life off the grid in remote Shan Hills"},"content":{"rendered":"

Living just a few kilometers away from the bustling settlements and well-worn paths around Myanmar’s Inle Lake are villages\u00a0that still live off the grid. A strong sense of community has helped them\u00a0adapt to the modern world and continue to subsist\u00a0in a fast-changing country.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

My connecting-the-dots from the popular Inle Lake to Shan Hills started as\u00a0I wandered the streets in search of things to do in the area. A travel-agency boldly announced trekking options, but a smaller sign that talked about a ‘home-stay’ got me interested. The deal was made in minutes and my plans for the next two days was set. I was heading to the hills\u00a0next morning and stay in a village inhabited PaO people, one of the many indigenous communities in Shan state.<\/p>\n

\"Shan<\/a>
\nShan Hills, as seen from Inle Lake.<\/em><\/p>\n

We began early next morning. It was a pleasant post-monsoon dawn\u00a0when\u00a0a\u00a0thin layer of clouds kept the air crisp – perfect for the\u00a0long walk ahead.\u00a0We quickly put\u00a0behind us the line\u00a0of restaurants and lodges on the edge of Inle Lake and hiked up the green hills to the east. The path took us up the gentle slopes through the clearings, past wooded sections, occasional opening\u00a0into\u00a0corn fields and subsequently through\u00a0cheerful grassland slopes with a scattering of colourful flowers. The few hamlets\u00a0we saw along the way were small, with only a handful of houses located adjacent to the fields.<\/p>\n

As we walked through the changing landscape, my guide Wei Zoo opened up to my\u00a0barrel of my questions and spoke at\u00a0length\u00a0about himself, his family, his ambition to open a restaurant for tourists visiting Inle Lake, life in the town we came from\u00a0and the contrast we would see later\u00a0in the PaO villages along the way.<\/p>\n

\"Trekking
\n<\/a>\"Shan<\/a> \"Shan<\/a> \"Shan<\/a> \"Shan<\/a>
\nMy guide Wei Zoo leads the way on the trek to Shan Hills.<\/i><\/p>\n

The plains-people and the hill-men have lived in a symbiotic relationship for a long time, producing things that the other party wouldn’t be able to, and exchanging each other’s produce on their way to sustenance and prosperity. In the\u00a0periphery of the lake, people made a living selling fish or growing rice and vegetables in the marshes. Up in the hills, they collected forest produce and\u00a0sold it to buy rice, fish or other materials that come from faraway. The only thing they grew on the slopes was cheroot leaves–Myanmar’s favourite\u00a0puff–that gets packaged by workers in the lake’s many floating villages. The corn-fields I passed along the way were probably a more recent addition limited to lower slopes.<\/p>\n

Everyday, a market gathers in one of the five designated floating villages on Inle Lake on a rotation basis, where the hill people arrive in large number to buy and sell. The commute from their village in the hills to the markets below happens in motor-bikes\u00a0or ox-carts when there is a road, or on feet where there isn’t one. Most hill-villages are connected by unmetalled roads that\u00a0appear as a snaking brown\u00a0strip on the otherwise green hills.<\/p>\n

These roads, as Wei Zoo puts it, are often made by contributed labour from the people of the village. Even today, the provincial or federal governments do not have much presence in these hills, and local\u00a0administration is largely managed by village headmen, councils and the monks. They play an active role in the way the village functions, deciding how the land is distributed, managing common facilities and determining how the society functions. That evening, I was to stay in one such self-governed PaO village.<\/p>\n

Just when the sun was high and the walk was becoming tiring, Wei Zoo decided it was\u00a0time for a break. We stopped\u00a0at PaO home\u00a0for lunch, which was in a small village with no more than half-a-dozen houses. I exchanged quick smiles with the man of the house before he busied himself at work.\u00a0They had just harvested a few basket-loads of cheroot leaves, and he was\u00a0now working at\u00a0drying them. Freshly picked\u00a0cheroot leaves were\u00a0spread on a metal plate. A heavy object–typically a disk\u00a0wrapped in\u00a0clothes–was kept on the leaves to press and flatten them. The whole assembly is placed on a long earthen-oven\u00a0with several openings where these plates can be placed. When the\u00a0process\u00a0is complete fifteen minutes later, the leaves come out crisp and dry, ready to be sold in the market. The cheroot-making units on the lake\u00a0buy\u00a0the leaves and\u00a0roll them with tobacco.<\/p>\n

\"Drying
\n<\/a>Drying cheroot leaves.<\/em><\/p>\n

By the time our lunch was done, three cycles of drying was done and there was a fairly good\u00a0stack of crisp leaves piled into a corner.<\/p>\n

We moved higher up the hills and walked for about three hours before reaching a village hidden in thick vegetation. This was the largest hamlet I had seen during the day’s walk, having about a score of houses spread randomly on both sides of a wide unmetalled track.\u00a0I was to stay that night in the biggest house in the village, again owned by a cheroot growing family. The\u00a0ground level of the house was dedicated to\u00a0processing and drying cheroot\u00a0leaves, while the family lived upstairs. A girl\u00a0was busy drying the\u00a0leaves, while the lady of the house welcomed me in. She was introduced to me as ‘Daw,’\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0aunt.<\/p>\n

\"Pao<\/a><\/p>\n

Daw did not speak much, but took an interest in my well-being immediately. She smiled eternally, never once letting\u00a0it fade even slightly.\u00a0Her\u00a0demeanor was very calm and confident, and her eyes effused compassion and a willingness\u00a0to care for everyone. Nonetheless, we did not get to speak much. Although she once worked as the English teacher at the village primary school, she could haltingly speak a few words and prefer to\u00a0be in silence instead. I did not mind either – I was happy to watch her industriousness as she took care of\u00a0everyone in the family as well as me.<\/p>\n

\"Pao<\/a> \"Drying<\/a> \"Pao<\/a> \"Children<\/a><\/p>\n

The evening was spent listening to Wei Zoo under\u00a0a dull incandescent bulb as my dinner was getting ready. The bulb wasn’t connected to a larger\u00a0grid, but was powered with a\u00a0small hydroelectricity generator that the villagers had installed\u00a0at a nearby waterfall. When the water level falls in summer months and the energy\u00a0generating capacity reduces, the village monastery gets first right\u00a0for power supply over houses.<\/p>\n

Just like electricity, much of the village infrastructure is community-built. The road across the village is built by its own people. The\u00a0primary school building too, is a collective effort and the teachers are appointed by the village chief.<\/p>\n

The village administration’s effort goes beyond setting up the infrastructure; they also play a key role in social and economic issues. The community wields full\u00a0control of\u00a0the land around the village, and this is often given to or taken\u00a0from villagers as needed. When a young man finds his\u00a0match and wants to start a family, he can request for\u00a0land from the community. He can usually take as much land he thinks he can work on, but any unused land will have to be eventually returned\u00a0back. The administrative efforts even reach inside the four walls of a house. Binge drinking and domestic violence can attract a punishment, ensuring that the social order doesn’t\u00a0breaks down.<\/p>\n

Naturally, this\u00a0appears to be a system that allows everyone in the society to live well, though\u00a0few, if at all, get a chance to become affluent.\u00a0A new family starts with a small land holding and a bamboo hut at the edge of their field. Their first goal usually is\u00a0in building a better house. This process begins with\u00a0buying and accumulating timber until there is enough to construct a house. Once this is done, wealth is usually stored as\u00a0gold, as most\u00a0people are not yet exposed to the banking system.<\/p>\n

All this might sound like an exotic and near-utopian land. Perhaps this is true, or perhaps these places have their own problems, but as an outsider who did not understand their language and been\u00a0here just a day listening to the honest opinions of a tour guide, I may not have deeper insights to their lives. What was apparent was that they were\u00a0relatively isolated from the modern world.\u00a0And yet, living not too faraway from the bustling Inle Lake area, they were no strangers to the world outside their society.<\/p>\n

With tourism exploding around the lake, life here might\u00a0change soon too. Perhaps some PaO may find working in tourism industry a lot more lucrative in the days to come.\u00a0The government has just set aside a large area of land facing the lake as ‘tourism zone’, where several hotel projects are slated to come up soon.\u00a0For a PaO man who would be searching for opportunities outside their villages,\u00a0finding unskilled\u00a0jobs may not be a distant dream. This might just mark the beginning of PaO people’s move into the urban society. Trekking groups and guided individuals like me are already visiting the Shan Hills, which may increase the exposure of these people to tourism.<\/p>\n

I could also sense some ecological problems arising\u00a0in the region in the days to come. Similar to\u00a0many countries in different stages of modernization, population in the hills seems to be growing fast. One observation that gave strength to this idea was the rapid increase in farmland cleared for agriculture in the recent times, as Wei Zoo told me. This could well lead to environmental issues that people in the hills and the\u00a0lake area may begin facing in the days to come.<\/p>\n

These problems, however, are only speculations of a visitor who has been here\u00a0very briefly. I wish the PaO live happily as a community, even as they prosper and someday inevitably integrate with the modern world.<\/p>\n

About Trekking in Shan Hills from Inle Lake – A quick guide<\/h3>\n

There are several trekking options in Shan Hills area, varying from a few hours to as long as a week. One of the very popular treks begins from the town of Kalaw and ends in Inle Lake, taking three days or more. While these can be easily booked on arrival either in Kalaw or in Inle Lake (Nyaung Shwe town), it is possible to book ahead through a travel agent in Yangon.<\/p>\n

The trek I made was for two days starting and ending in Inle Lake. Any travel agency in Nyaung Shwe town at the edge of Inle Lake can organize this at a very short notice. Day treks and half-day treks are also possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Living just a few kilometers away from the bustling settlements and well-worn paths around Myanmar’s Inle Lake are villages\u00a0that still live off the grid. A strong sense of community has helped them\u00a0adapt to the modern world and continue to subsist\u00a0in a fast-changing country. My connecting-the-dots from the popular Inle Lake to Shan Hills started as\u00a0I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[471,409,1],"tags":[435,556,486,485],"class_list":["post-11090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-myanmar","category-uncategorized","tag-inle-lake","tag-myanmar","tag-pao","tag-shan-hills"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xrJt-2SS","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11090"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11148,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11090\/revisions\/11148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paintedstork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}