Attempted Ride to Prone - Pyay
taxi back to Rangoon - Yangon
The tour is nearly over. To get my last taste of adventure, I decide to escape down a logging road that snakes west. The map shows a faint line to the historic site of Prone - Pyay - and it'll obviously be a long hard ride, so after stocking up on water and snacks, I head for the hills before sunrise.
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It's great at first - quiet, flat and smooth. A couple of hours later and the narrow lane starts rising, then the tarmac ends. Just like that. There's just dust, thick talcum powder stuff that's imposible to ride on.
The trail winds and twists and goes up and down. I walk, trying to ride where I can, but my gears are clogged with pale dust. Only 4x4s and logging trucks could make this trip and I see none of the former and just a couple of the latter during the whole morning. By then my water has gone and things have become disorienting, having seen no signs of life or habitation.
What's that I can hear? A logging wagon is coming, its engine revving like crazy to make it through the fine dust. When it appears I wave it down and ask for a lift; my bike sits on its flat bed while I hang on tight to the cab's roof, dust kicked up behind obliterating the views as the vehicle careers along the tight, undulating trail.
The driver eventually pulls up at a ramshackle compound consisting of a few grass huts, where I'm told that the rest of the route is even worse. Difficult to comprehend, but I believe it. To cap it off they say this point is only about a third of the way to Prone.
Enough adventure. I throw the towel in and a couple of hours later my bike gets tied to a truck loaded with huge tree trunks twice the size of my wheel that's thankfully heading back to the main road. It's dusk by the time we set off and when we finally roll to a halt on the potholed tarmac in darkness, I hand a ten-dollar bill to the stoic driver, who patently can't believe his luck. The whole trip was worth it just to see his face.
In the morning there's a guy in a black jacket at reception asking me how I got on. He seems like a government agent; he says he's a tour guide. Right. He hears me say I had to abandon the 'ride' and tells me a British cyclist did manage to get right across to Prone once, but that it took him a few days. I can well believe it.
The next day I decide to get a taxi all the way south to Rangoon, back to the guesthouse where I stayed when I first arrived, as it's a route already cycled and one which didn't give me much of a buzz: too flat.
My last day is spent hunting around for some silk cloth and when an elderly guy approaches me and offers to be a guide, I give him five bucks and tell him to lead the way. I get the cloth and then head to the market area where there are women with sewing machines, who make a pair of pyjamas for my wife within a couple of hours.
As I ride around taking a few last photos of the city's colonial architecture, another man stops me for a chat, but becomes anxious and bids me leave when he sees some officials nearby; there are informants and agents everywhere and during my near-month tour, people have complained about corruption, nepotism and mismanagement.
I'm sure that when the military junta has been kicked out and democracy has returned, it'll be possible to tour the rest of Burma, the vast area that's currently out of bounds to foreigners. Places the government is doing god knows what. I'd love to see it.
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