Mini getaways from Yangon by Bike World Explores Myanmar offer offbeat adventures on a Sunday afternoon
A cyclist crosses a footbridge in Nga Su Taung. Photo: Douglas Long
Neither of us paid much attention to the bullock cart parked in the middle of the trail. It sat as if abandoned, with neither driver nor cows anywhere to be seen, so we simply pedalled past and continued down the narrow dirt path on our mountain bikes.
A few minutes later our two-way radio crackled to life. My cycling companion – Australian Jeff Parry, a longtime resident of Yangon – was carrying the device in the back pocket of his cycling jersey. The other radio was in the hands of a group of Myanmar cyclists with whom we were exploring the hilly terrain around Nga Su Taung village, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Yangon.
We pulled over to answer the call. The other riders were somewhere behind us, and their shouted message wasn’t entirely clear through the radio static. We could only make out a few disjointed words – “elephant”, “hunting” and “come back” among them – which were enough to prompt us to turn around and hightail it out of there.
Turns out the cart had been parked on the path for a reason: It had been intended as a warning against proceeding farther down the trail. A farmer had seen me and Parry fly past on our bikes and had flagged down the following riders to tell them that heavily armed soldiers were tramping through the brush up ahead, hunting a wild elephant that had, over the course of the past few weeks, trampled several villagers to death.
Needless to say, we spent the rest of the day exploring in other directions.
The elephant incident occurred in 2006, when local cyclists had just discovered Nga Su Taung and its environs. Since then, the area’s dirt roads and pathways have been thoroughly explored by mountain bikers, and a handful of safe but challenging routes have been mapped out for riders to follow.
Neither of us paid much attention to the bullock cart parked in the middle of the trail. It sat as if abandoned, with neither driver nor cows anywhere to be seen, so we simply pedalled past and continued down the narrow dirt path on our mountain bikes.
A few minutes later our two-way radio crackled to life. My cycling companion – Australian Jeff Parry, a longtime resident of Yangon – was carrying the device in the back pocket of his cycling jersey. The other radio was in the hands of a group of Myanmar cyclists with whom we were exploring the hilly terrain around Nga Su Taung village, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of Yangon.
We pulled over to answer the call. The other riders were somewhere behind us, and their shouted message wasn’t entirely clear through the radio static. We could only make out a few disjointed words – “elephant”, “hunting” and “come back” among them – which were enough to prompt us to turn around and hightail it out of there.
Turns out the cart had been parked on the path for a reason: It had been intended as a warning against proceeding farther down the trail. A farmer had seen me and Parry fly past on our bikes and had flagged down the following riders to tell them that heavily armed soldiers were tramping through the brush up ahead, hunting a wild elephant that had, over the course of the past few weeks, trampled several villagers to death.
Needless to say, we spent the rest of the day exploring in other directions.
The elephant incident occurred in 2006, when local cyclists had just discovered Nga Su Taung and its environs. Since then, the area’s dirt roads and pathways have been thoroughly explored by mountain bikers, and a handful of safe but challenging routes have been mapped out for riders to follow.
.jpg)
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment