4am to 4pm

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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.

Hours 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.

Going 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.

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

We climbed up pretty high, just to go down again
1/400 Sek. f/5,5 75 mm

Traincrossing
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.

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

We 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

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

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

As 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.

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

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

What 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

I 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

The 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.

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

1/2000 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 ;)

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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:

• 1. Bangkok
• 2. Myanmar, Mandalay & Malaria?

There is a new chapter coming each Thursday

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

• Introduction to steemit

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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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