Myanmar Katha October 13, 2012

     Today in Katha encompassed 3 highlights of our trip to Myanmar.  It began with Kathy assisting a crew member by placing a hard boiled egg on top of each monks’ bowl of rice provided by our ship.
     Then we boarded local buses for an extremely bumpy ride on pot-holed dirt lanes past colonial homes, rice fields and dense jungle vegetation until we reached the path to the Myanma Timber Enterprise where there were 15 working elephants.
     First, I had to straddle a motorcycle and hold on to a young mahoot as we zig-zagged on the winding path. When we reached the encampment, each blue suited mahoot guided his elephant by using his left bare foot under the elephant’s ear.  After Kathy fed bananas to the larger elephants and I fed a tamarind to a baby elephant, the mahoots took the elephants into the river and used soapwood bark to give them a bath.
     Back in Katha we piled into horse carts to see specific places which George Orwell mentioned when he wrote “Burmese Days” in 1934.