A Journey of Screaming Slience

We’re often in such a rush to get somewhere, we forget to notice the details passing us by.

One of the luxuries of travel is watching and feeling time slow down – at times melting into a downbeat hum.

This isn’t down time, but a conscious realization that the constrictions of time are as fleeting as time itself.

Couple that with the journey’s motion and its perspective granting vantage to see what is happening around and experience its dynamo.

On the edge of the Burmese abyss, where the government has no authority and tourists are not permitted lies a small town called Mrauk U.

Unlike its more popular and less scenic cousin Bagan, Mrauk U is desolate of tourits but full of historic temples, some overgrown by jungle, others set amidst the smoky village’s cooking fires.

But getting there. Getting there is a quest.

The ferry leaves a few time a week from Sittwe’s muddy jetty and chugs up the Kaladan River, passing fishermen in motorless sailboats, hand carved boats overloaded with cargo and excited children waving who live in tiny villages accessible only by water.

The ferry leaves early in the morning under a shroud of mist. Wobbly planks bridge the emptiness between the rickety wooden dock and the ferry’s lower deck.

Non-Burmese are required to purchase an upper deck ticket which affords beautiful views and hard wooden seats and the dawn’s chilly gusts.

For the next four hours, time swoons by as the fields of wheat sway like a metronome’s mesmerizing pendulum.