The Real Water Garden

While travelling in Myanmar (Burma), visiting the magnificent temples and archaeological sites. We made an unforgettable trip to Inle Lake. Situated at 3000ft in a mountainous region, it lies at the end of a long and tortuous road through the the Shan Hills.Like a mirage, its placid waters are in stark contrast to the peaks surrounding it.
The industrious Intha people who inhabit the lake live in silt houses and support themselves by growing a wide variety of flowers,vegetables and fruit year round. These crops are cultivated on floating islands, where soil, marsh and water hyacinths (a beautiful yet vigourous weed, choking many rivers and waterways in South East Asia) have combined to form incredibly fertile solid masses, which are staked to the lake bottom which is only 3 feet deep, with bamboo poles. Among the islands and peninsulas thus formed, is a network of canals that provide access to the gardens,so allowing them to be tended by the Intha people from their small flat bottom boats. Everything from planting to harvesting is done from these small craft. Never stepping on ashore this is the ultimate in Water Gardening!
We spent nine hours on this lake aboard one of their small boats, admiring bright colourful flowers, melons, cucumbers, yard long beans and many more varieties of fruit and veg all bobbing about on the lake surface, as our small boat caused the smallest of waves, as we made our way down the canals, so unreal and never forgotten.

Phil and Elkie Dennis