Burmese days: in the footsteps of George Orwell
�In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people � the only
time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.�
Its fair to say that George Orwell didnt enjoy his first job as a policeman. These are the opening words of his essay Shooting an Elephant, which deftly captures his discomfort, and ultimately disgust, at being part of the British colonial system in its slow death throes.
His experiences in the country in the 1920s left him with a hatred of authority and imperialism that can be traced via his work in the 1940s for the Observer to his great novel, 1984.
But the young Eric Blair, just 19 years old when he joined the Indian Imperial Police, liked the country itself. The beauty of the landscape fed a passion for the natural world that lasted until his death and inspired this most disciplined of writers into the purple prose of his first novel Burmese Days.
I set out for Moulmein now Mawlamyine to explore the land that marked Orwell and perhaps find a few traces of the writer himself.
Tourists have poured into Myanmar since the generals relaxed their decades-long grip on the country. The big sights north of the former capital Yangon such as Mandalay, the temples of Bagan and Inle Lake are now overrun, but the south is a few years behind.
The town of Hpa-An is a days drive from Yangon through miles of rubber-tree plantations where drying rectangles of natural rubber are draped over fences like dirty bathmats. The road was quiet but made hazardous by a quirk of Myanmar; it drives on the right-hand side of the road but imports its cars secondhand from left-hand driving Thailand and Japan. Drivers rely on a passenger to give them the all-clear for overtaking, or simply good luck.
You cant move for pagodas in Myanmar. Every hilltop is crowned by a golden example, but I stopped at one of the most dramatic. Kyauk- Kalat is balanced precariously on a limestone pinnacle in the middle of a lake. Its a working monastery, but shoe-free visitors are allowed. A monk broke off from texting long enough to slip his phone inside his robes and give me a blessing.
Hpa-An was sleepy but charming and lay on the Thanlyin river, my route to Mawlamyine. The perfect spot to watch the sun set after a long day on the road was the pretty pagoda of Shweyinhmyaw Paya, which looks out across the river towards the distinctive limestone peak of Mount HparPu. The stupa of the pagoda burned golden until the sun fell rapidly into the jungle.
I ate mohinga, a catfish soup with rice vermicelli, lemongrass, chilli and lime, for breakfast in the market the next day for about 15p, swerved past the stinking vats of ngapi, a potent fish paste, and bought bein moun, pancakes smeared with jaggery syrup, for my ferry ride.
The boat was a Bangkok longtail on steroids, its engine blasting away any attempts at conversation among the passengers for the three-hour trip. Instead we slumped in plastic garden chairs to doze and eye river life.
Children from the waterside villages stopped their somersaults into the river to squeal at us. We passed giant bamboo rafts; a local guide later told us that illegally logged teak was often hidden beneath them.
Mawlamyine appeared around a bend, below a ridge of pagoda-topped hills. Burma was one of the least popular postings in the police force, but Orwell chose it because he had family links generations of his mothers family, the Limouzins, had lived in Mawlamyine. Teak made the town wealthy in the 19th century, and there was a large European population at the time.
Much remains of those boom years, and walking the streets it wasnt hard to imagine a miserable Orwell here, plotting his escape. Crumbling colonial mansions line the main streets and there are churches in varying states of decay. A Christmas concert was in preparation at St Xavier, but all was peaceful at the Baptist church until I carelessly woke a large snake from its slumbers in a kitchen sink.
Mawlamyine was in decline by the time Orwell arrived in 1926. I enlisted the help of local history expert Mr Anthony (I never found out his second name), who sent me to the home where Orwells mother grew up, but just an impressive iron gate and high walls remained of the building. Mr Anthony explained: It was bombed in the war by the British or Japanese. The Limouzins left Burma like all the rest of the Europeans. Mr Collins was the last, but he died last year.
There must be an unwritten rule in Myanmar that there has to be a giant Buddha for every man, woman and child in the country. Buddha fatigue can set in for travel-weary tourists, but I rallied myself to visit Sein Taw Ya, about 14 miles south of Mawlamyine, which is claimed to be the largest reclining Buddha in the world. Its certainly very big, around 600ft long and 100ft high, but the real fun starts when you get close to it, because visitors can explore the many floors inside the concrete structure. You can quite literally get into the mind of Buddha.
A series of dioramas depicting scenes from Buddhas life and images from Buddhist hell, some extremely gruesome, filled the shell. Small children wandered round looking frankly terrified and clinging ever more tightly to their parents. A massive water slide sat rather incongruously on the valley floor, thankfully well below Buddhas patient gaze, adding to the feeling that I was in a Buddhist theme park.
A new, even bigger reclining Buddha is being built nearby, but the monk who was the driving force behind the whole project died a few days before we visited the area and its future is now uncertain.
Orwell devoured Rudyard Kiplings work as a child and was certainly drawn to Burma by his descriptions of this exotic, faraway land. Indeed his poem Mandalay starts:
By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin eastward to the sea a shame then that Kyaikthanlan Pagoda, immortalised in Kiplings words, actually looks west to the sea, but I guess he and his soldier were distracted by the beauty of his Burma girl. Guardian Observer
