Feet throbbing and shoulders aching, the group’s energy instantly lifted when we left the shade of the bamboo forest and started winding our way between rice paddies and beautifully crafted irrigation and transport canals towards the south end of Inle Lake:

For people here at Inle, the canals are the roads, and the lake is their central hub. Even their vegetables are grown half submerged in water. I noticed that everybody has a boat, but there are relatively few mopeds and only a handful of pretty compact trucks.

A short distance later we’d navigated our way to a typical bamboo-stilts house for lunch, which I shamelessly insta-fooded:

We posed for a farewell photo as Saloi departed to gather another group for the reverse-trek from Inle to Kalaw. The legend was going to walk another 3 days back, without a break. Kudos to him, he did a great job:

His final gesture was to show us around the corner where a Mad-Max style engine chugged away at the back of carefully hand-carved boat, featuring bamboo deckchairs for seating:

When we settled, the propeller was dropped into the water and we were propelled forward at a surprising speed. They don’t hang about on those boats, and the ride along the narrow, green canals was pretty thrilling:

We suddenly burst from the canal and entered the main portion of the lake. I noted that the Mad-Max boats are often also paddled in a unique fashion to allow both hands free for throwing fishing nets. It was pretty tough to get a clear shot of this with the speed our boat was going!

Finally, the boat deposited us in Nyaung Shwe, a bustling town which grew rapidly from the influx of money brought to Inle by tourism. We found our way to the hotel where our bags were being kept, and grabbed a few minutes of free wi-fi until they switched it off. We suspect this was likely due to the huge number of muddy-booted foreigners who had trudged in to collect their rucksacks and then sod off elsewhere.

We sodded off elsewhere, negotiating a 25% discount on a room in the White Avenue, a pleasant little hotel just outside Nyaung Shwe city centre. We were grateful for free wifi, amazing showers and a towel folded to look like an elephant:

A full day at Inle awaited, so I crawled into the first real bed I’d slept in for days and slumbered like any guy who’d just walked 50km is expected to sleep: Amazingly.