Inle Lake

Inle Lake fills a broad, shallow valley in the Shan Hills of eastern Myanmar at around 880 metres above sea level. It is the country's second-largest lake, covering over a hundred square kilometres, yet in the dry season it is only about two metres deep, rising by a metre or more once the monsoon arrives. That shallowness is the key to everything that makes Inle extraordinary: across much of its surface the line between lake and land is blurred by floating gardens, channels and whole villages of bamboo houses built on stilts, so that a boat trip here feels less like crossing open water than moving through a floating landscape.

The lake belongs to the Intha, whose way of life has adapted to it in ways found nowhere else. Their fishermen stand at the stern of narrow boats and row with one leg wrapped around the oar, leaving both hands free for the nets, and a silhouette of a leg-rower against the morning haze is the classic image of Inle. On the western side, farmers raise vegetables all year round on floating gardens, kyun hmaw, made by gathering lake-bottom weed and mud into long beds that are pinned in place with bamboo poles and rise and fall with the water. Between the gardens run lanes of water lined with stilt houses, workshops and monasteries.

The religious heart of the lake is the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda, which keeps five small Buddha images that tradition says were brought here by the Bagan king Alaungsithu in the twelfth century; centuries of devotees pressing gold leaf onto them have turned them into shapeless golden lumps. In the month of Thadingyut, around September and October, four of the five are carried around the lake on a gilded barge shaped like a mythical hintha bird, towed by long teams of leg-rowers moving in unison, and spend each night in a different village. The lake is also a place of real natural value: it holds more than 35 native fish species, 17 of them found nowhere else, and in 2015 it became Myanmar's first UNESCO biosphere reserve, followed by listing as a Ramsar wetland in 2018.

Getting there

The main base is the town of Nyaungshwe (Yawnghwe) at the northern end of the lake, about 12 km from its centre, where boat trips onto the lake usually begin. The nearest airport is Heho (HEH), roughly 25–35 km away, with domestic flights. Mandalay is about 330 km away and Yangon about 660 km by road.