Myanmar Inle-Lake, Myanmar

Inle Lake is about 100 square kilometres in size. It sustains all the various communities that live along its edge. You’ll see floating vegetable gardens around the place. The one-legged rowers are mostly fishermen but there are a few just starting to earn more of a living from tourism. There are some great tourist resorts facing onto the water, Nyaungshwe township, various villages, pagodas and complexes of panted religious stupas.

Everything is up on stilts because the water level between high and low seasons is about 5 metres. There is also a stately home up on stilts. It has been turned over to various small industries including sale of scarves made with local silk. Part of it has been sectioned off as a Burmese cat sanctuary. If you like cats, go in there and mingle; they’re like no other breed; if you don’t like cats, stay well clear, they’ll be all over you with even the slightest invitation. Inle a photographic paradise – go before tourism steals its soul.

If you see boats of tourists being chased by seagulls, its because the gulls have learned to keep pace with the boat and take food from the hands of tourists.

Give yourself at least 3 full days if you want to give the area good coverage. We were busy from pre-dawn to dusk and two days just wasn’t enough and we knew it on our second day.

Get a good resort on the lake if you can afford it. It’s so nice after a pre-dawn outing in a boat to come back to a really good breakfast and shower in readiness for the rest of the day and a good meal plus reliable Wi-Fi at the end of a day.

On the lake, we used telephoto with image stabilisation but as soon as we stepped out of the boat, we had to go wide-angle.

There is a train from Thazi to Shwenyaung, leaving at about 5:30 in the morning (ours left an hour early but our driver from Yangon got us there early, bought our ticket and took us to our carriage) getting in late afternoon. It zig-zags between villages up and down the hills. It bounced all over the place but it really is well worth the effort – you won’t put your camera away for long.

You can catch a taxi or jump on the back of a local truck (seats in the back) for the trip from the train station to town. If you have a booked a resort in the water (they are all serviced by road at the back), arrive by water. You’ll pay 3 times the price that locals pay but it’s a great experience.

Fly out.