Traveling to Southeast Asia: The best trainride of my life, MyanmarsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #travel7 years ago (edited)

4am to 4pm


When the alarm went off at 3 o'clock in the morning I was wide awake immediately. We had one hour to pack our backpacks and get to the train station. Since the train station was about 20 minutes by foot and we had to carry our big backpacks we requested some motorbikes to take us to the station.

P8040933kl.jpgHours after we left Mandalay the sun finally showed its face
1/1600 Sek. f/5 14 mm

It was quite an experience, I haven't been riding on a motorbike for years. The 13kg+ backpack strapped to my back didn't make things easier. As we were rushing through the quiet streets of Mandalay me and my sister holding on to our drivers the city looked, sounded and smelled like completely different. No loud traffic, no shouting sellers on the market. Just a few stray dogs going after their business.
The train consisted of three coaches: the first was lower class, the middle one the upper class and the last one for soldiers. The lower class and soldier coach seats were only wooden benches, were three or more people squeezed together. Upper class had big cushy seats in which you could lean back until you were nearly lying. Since the tickets for the upper class costed only 4 Dollars we opted for the comfier ride. In our carriage mostly other western tourists and a few military officers were seated.

P8040907kl.jpgGoing up into the cloudy mountains
1/40 Sek. f/5 31 mm

At around 4am with a lot of shouting and gesturing, the train slowly started to move. The next 12 hours we would sit in this swinging and rocking train and cover only 200 kilometres (about 124 miles). It was two hours until sunrise but we were already sweating. The train, which was allegedly a present by North Korea, was never going faster than 20km/h (~12,5mph) as we slowly left Mandalay.
Slowly working our way up into the mountains the train was always going back and forth along the mountain side. We found out that the seats could be turned in any direction so we turned them to face the window directly and put our feet out the window. The sun was starting to rise as we made our way up the mountains giving us an amazing view of Mandalay in its surroundings.

P8040910kl.jpgOne of the best feelings I ever had during a trainride!
1/40 Sek. f/5 14 mm

P8040964kl.jpgWe climbed up pretty high, just to go down again
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P8040948kl.jpgTraincrossing
1/640 Sek. f/5 22 mm

Being awake since 4am became noticeable so we were soon fast asleep while the train kept swinging slowly up into the mountains. Suddenly I was woken by an angry voice. The conductor was vigorously talking to me in broken english so it took my sleepy head a while to process what he was saying. It turned out that you are not allowed to turn your seats to the window. Reluctantly I woke my sister up to turn the seats.
As the train climbed higher and higher into the mountains the air became cooler and more pleasant. The sun was already up for several hours, so the first farmers were already at work in their fields. After a few hours the train stopped for half an hour at a small town. We bought some (really spicy) food and delicious mangos and pinapples.

P8040925kl.jpgFarmers going after their business in the morning sun
1/640 Sek. f/5,6 150 mm

P8040954kl.jpgWe stopped here for quite a while to get some food and wait for the rest of the train
1/100 Sek. f/5,5 80 mm

P8041019kl.jpgJust some nice old guys smoking away on his palmleaf cigarettes
1/160 Sek. f/5,6 100 mm

P8040950kl.jpgHere we got the best mangos and pinapples I ever had
1/200 Sek. f/5 14 mm

P8040953kl.jpgAs small and cute they looked as sweet and tasty they were!
1/125 Sek. f/5,2 36 mm

Soon after this stop saw the highlight of the trainride: the huge 689 metres (2,260 ft) long and 102 metres (335 ft) high Goteik viaduct. Given it's age (finished in 1900) the trains cross it with extra slow speed, providing us with plenty of time to take pictures!
Standing in the open doors with a hundred metres of nothing beneath me was certainly an exciting feeling! Eventhough we crossed the bridge in slow motion, the whole thing was over way too soon.

P8040985kl.jpgPit stop just before crossing the bridge
1/640 Sek. f/5 14 mm

P8040981kl.jpgThe Goteik viaduct in its full pride!
1/800 Sek. f/5 29 mm

P8040994kl.jpgWhat an amazing feeling it was crossing on this 117 year old bridge riding a train that felt just as old
1/800 Sek. f/5 14 mm

P8040996kl.jpgI have to admit standing right on the edge to 100 metres of nothing gave me a spine-tingling feeling
1/800 Sek. f/5 14 mm

P8041009kl.jpgThe views right out the doors were unreal! If you timed it well you could jump right into that river (and probably snuff it)
1/1000 Sek. f/5 14 mm

After these exciting minutes we traveled few more hours through beautiful landscapes with rice and corn fields along the tracks. We arrived at out destination Hsipaw (spoken see-paw) at about 4pm. As usual we didn't have a hostel so we just checked our Lonely Planet travel guide and went to the recommended and biggest hostel in town.

P8040962kl.jpgI was delighted to see, that rice farmers still wear these iconic hats
1/400 Sek. f/5,6 150 mm

P8041032kl.jpg1/2000 Sek. f/4 14 mm

The next day we went for a 3-day-hike to villages so remote, they even spoke different languages.
More on that next Thursday ;)


All shots in this post were made with my Olympus OMD EM-10 Mark II with a 14-150mm lense in manual mode.

If you want to learn more about my travel through southeast Asia you can read the previous posts here:

There is a new chapter coming each Thursday

If you want to know more about me check this out:


Steemit Worldmap Data:
!steemitworldmap 22.341582 lat 96.859245 long Traveling to Southeast Asia, The best trainride of my life, Myanmar d3scr

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You are a great photojournalist and can really tell a story, just found you and now following you

Thank you so much, telling a story is 100-times more fun if someone actually reads and appreciates it :)

I totally agree 😊

Agree. I love the cute pineapple shot. Oh wait, maybe the rice farmers photo is my favourite. Oh wait, I cannot choose! 😊

Haha no need to choose :D just love them all

Train rides are the best. Love the photography.

Yeah I would chose train over car anytime if it wasnt so expensive in Austria..
Thanks a lot!

And thank you so much for resteeming!

People need to see this, I couldn't help it haha. Cheers man and looking forward to see more from you!

Wow, great pictures & loved reading about your journey.


This gem of a post was discovered by the OCD Team!

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Wow! Of course I accept your offer, I feel honored that you are willing to promote my post!

The post is no longer undervalued. Hope to nominate your work in future, keep up the good work! :)

Well I am happy its no longer undevalued but sad that you cant feature it ^^
The next post of this series will come next Thursday at about the same time if you want to keep an eye out for it ;)

I'd rather have it that your posts are no longer undervalued :) but sure i shall keep an eye out. And you can use the tag #ocd-resteem, you can get resteemed by @ocd once a month. all the best ! :)

Haha you are right of course! I will use the tag if I think the post is worth it ;)

Hello, I would like to say huge congratulations to you for winning European Thursday comptetition in my 7 World's Continents Photo Challenge. Your pictures are absolutely stunning and I am sure they won't go unnoticed. Great job. Kindly see if you can answer some congratulations notes in my post once they start pouring in sometimes throughout the day. Thanks ever so much. Tomas

7 World’s Continents Photo Challenge – European Thursday – winner announcement!

I am Myanmar. I Love Myanmar.

Heya, just swinging by to let you know you're being featured in our Daily Travel Digest Post!

As I said, you're being featured, I hope we can get all the map issues sorted out for this post as it is seriously amazing!

Thanks for the great support with my issue! I solved it, as I wrote in my other answer :D
I will check out your post right away!

Sehr guter Post wieder, liest sich echt gut! Freut mich, dass du hier auch genug Anerkennung bekommst und deshalb sicherlich weiterposten wirst ;) Bis dann!

Vielen Dank! Bei so einer Resonanz denke ich gar nicht ans aufhören :P

Habe ich mir gedacht ;)

Nice post

check out my new post:

https://steemit.com/photography/@msazzad2/nqow8-mobile-photography

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