You say Ayeyarwady, I say Irrawaddy, by any name it's one long, important river

The Ayeyarwady River ( Irrawaddy is the English name) flows some 1,348 miles from the Northern most reaches of Myanmar, in the cold of the Kumon Mountain Range, to the warmth of the Andaman Sea. It was our "Road to Mandalay" for fourteen days, as we plied upstream on the river boat AMAPura, a delightful, comfortable little boat populated with well-traveled, mainly seniors from Canada, Great Britan, Mexico and the USA. With space for 56, our group of 36 bonded well over the cruise and that added to its enjoyment.

We started our journey amid the hustle and bustle of the Botataung Jetty in Yangon which is right next to the pagoda by the same name. Yangon has been a major port throughout its history and this jetty hummed with commercial activity and commuter ferries, but not like what you might imagine.

Much of the work in Myanmar is still done by hand and the ferries were really only longboats.

As nightfall came on our first night on the boat and the jetty quieted, the beauty of sunset in Myanmar began to reveal itself.

As we travelled upstream, we quickly left twenty-first-century life behind and ventured into what was, for the most part, an agrarian or fishing life with only a glimpse of the modern world in some of the larger villages we passed. Seventy percent of the population live in rural areas and over 50% are unemployed with the number living at subsistence levels incalculable because the former dictatorship refused to acknowledge the issue by publishing statistics. By any measure, it is one of the poorest countries in the world with a per capita annual income of $916 US.

At first, there were a few towns on the river banks, but as we travelled upstream they became mere villages and, for the most part, temporary settlements lined the shores with the few towns and villages perched on the high banks. The Ayeyarwady floods vast portions of the land it flows through and covers the delta with a rich silt that helps produce the abundant rice crops that help feed the country.

The river truly is life for the people who live along it. Everything depends on it from water for drinking, cooking and washing to putting food on the table and providing employment for those fortunate to find work on it.   

Life goes on for these people no matter that a large ship has pulled right up to the bank. These shots were taken mainly from our room.

River life is tough and the work is mainly done manually. Women and men have it equally as tough.

One of the joys of travelling on the river boat was seeing all of the pagodas and stupas sprinkled  along the banks. A surprise was the morning and evening music that wafted from them. 

One also never knew what fascinating sight might be seen on the river.

At the end of the day, no matter how tired we were from the days activities, the sunsets provided the perfect ending to it and a welcome opportunity to sip a cocktail admiring one of Myanmar's many natural beauties.

 

In future posts, we will leave the ship to delve into the many outstanding sites we saw and the things we experienced.