North on Highway 1

Bago to Taungoo (Toungoo) and a train to Thazi

A few days later and I'm riding into Toungoo, the dust-covered, midway town on the road to Mandalay.

The first day of cycling north from Bago I popped into a school and saw the head and handed her some boxes of pencils that had been in my front panniers. They are a bit lighter now.

The ride has all been flat so far, quite sweltering and a bit too monotonous. The highlights were the stops where I'd get a cold drink or some fresh fruit, with the people eager to chat and often refusing to accept money for the produce.

So, when getting to one-street Taungoo (spelt Toungoo on some maps) it seems a prudent spot to abandon tedious Highway 1. Unfortunately there are few route options, so it looks like this is the place to get a train and zip further north.

The problem with getting a train in Burma is that most of the railways are owned by the state - and it's hard to find out which ones aren't - so I pay a local on a bike to direct me to the bus station. When we get there there are no services going north (it seems my arrival is too late in the afternoon) so he escorts me to the train station, where I fill out some forms and get a US$2 train ticket to Pyinmana, a place that's near the new capital of Burma, Nay Pyi Taw - both located about 60 km north of Taungoo.

I console myself with the fact that my couple of dollars aren't going to help the state too much and somewhat redeem that fact once the train is chugging north along the tracks, opting to go all the way to Thazi - a small junction town from which I can then head east into the hills. I slip the guard a few thousand kyat for the extra couple of hours; no questions asked. It goes straight in his pocket.

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