The wheel deal: cycling the back roads of Myanmar

THE BUDDHA COMES into view through the trees. He’s hard to miss, shining gold and standing 140 metres tall on the hazy hills.

I turn off the busy highway and cycle towards him down quiet sunny country lanes, through villages of thatched bamboo houses and past farmers shepherding goats to graze in fresh fields.

Monywa Buddha is one of the tallest Buddhas in the world. The 90-metre long statue laid out in front of him is the largest reclining Buddha in the world. At its feet are 1,000 smaller Buddhas sitting cross-legged.

It’s a unique religious site but, strangely, not one that’s often visited by international tourists, who, so far, have tended to stick to the sights of “classic” Myanmar trips: Yangon, Bagan, Inle Lake and Mandalay.

“By bike, you get to see the rural areas not many tourists get to see,” Aung Zaw, our group’s cycling guide, tells me as we approach the giant Buddha. This is what I came here for – I wanted to see the famous sights: Schwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the temple city of Bagan, the leg-rowing fishermen of Inle Lake. I wanted to experience the places and people between the sights, to see what life’s like in this country that’s been changing fast since it started opening up in 2011.

We’ve flown from Yangon to Heho to start cycling from the town of Nyaungshwe on the edge of Inle Lake. Lines of monks walk through the early morning mist, collecting alms, as we set off. We ride against the flow of traffic, as villagers with faces painted with the Burmese thanaka sunscreen travel into town for work or school on bikes, tractor carts and loaded trucks. Boatmen cut silently across the water, through morning mist lit by the sun.