A Slow Train to Gokteik
"North of Mandalay, the train, fueled with wood, crawled at twelve miles an hour across a vast parched plain where sometimes a white pagoda rose like the breast of a supine giantess... The train jolted on, slowly, stopping at little stations where barbaric yells sounded from the darkness."  So wrote George Orwell in his novel Burmese Days describing his life there in the 1920's.
Eighty years later, while traveling solo across Burma, I went on a similar train journey.  The only real differences were:  the country referred to itself as Myanmar, the train was made in China, and it ran on diesel fuel.  The cruising speed was still about twelve miles an hour, and the jolts continued.  A fellow backpacker, from Israel, said it was "like riding a camel, but slower."
My train traveled through the northeast provinces of the country tucked between the Chinese and Thai borders, alongside the famous "Burma Road" of World War II.  The tracks traverse areas still known for ethnic clashes, opium production, and the Gokteik Viaduct.
At the turn of the last century, the British colonial rulers wanted to extend a rail line through northeast Burma to create a continuous track running from India to China.  But they faced a formidable obstacle, a set of gorges to rival the Grand Canyon.  The gorges were nine hundred feet deep, framed on both sides by solid jungle, and filled with fierce rapids in the rainy season, snake and leech choked marshes in summer.
The British held an international competition to build a bridge to span the gorge in 1898.  The Pennsylvania Steel Company won the contract, the only such outsourcing deal for an American enterprise in the entire British empire.
The American effort was a success.  At 2200 feet long and 820 feet high, the bridge was the second highest in the world at the time.  The project's display at the 1901 Pan American Exhibition in San Francisco elicited awed commentary:  "Steel has replaced wood for bridges, and there is no more striking chapter in the story of America's commercial invasion of the world than the famous Gokteik Viaduct in Burma, planned in America and built of American steel by Americans, and with the usual American profit!"
And, because of its value for Japanese supply lines in WWII, this marvel was then bombed on a weekly basis in 1943 by American planes carrying American bombs, which, fortunately for current rail enthusiasts, mostly missed.
Early in 2003, I went to catch the Gokteik-bound "131-Up' train at the town of Pyin U Lwin, about 40 miles from the bridge.  The town is an old British hill station 4000 feet above sea level, where officials set up camp to escape the heat of Burmese summers.  Many original colonial buildings still stand, some of them serving as guest houses for foreign travelers.
When I arrived at the station at 7AM, I saw only a few locals squatting on a ramshackle wooden platform. They were all wrapped in locally produced sweaters to ward off the chill of an early morning fog.  As the fog began to clear, women precariously balancing market goods on their heads strolled across the tracks like visions from the past.  Wearing sweaters and sarongs, they offered everything from wrapped snacks and cigars, to baseball caps and small household appliances.  Their continuous Burmese shouts recalled Orwell's "barbaric yells," as I imagined they marked territory, advertised their wares, and brokered cigar-for-hat deals.  Using rudimentary sign language, I purchased a couple hard boiled eggs and some bread for the equivalent of ten cents.
Tickets to locals were sold through a barred window, but as the only foreigner there, I attracted attention.  The station master invited me into the ticket room, sat me in a chair behind the single desk, and poured me a cup of tea, either out of hospitality or as an excuse to inflate the ticket price.  I paid double the locals' rate (about four dollars) which I still considered cheap admission to see a historical bridge.
The train pulled into the station about 45 minutes behind schedule.  I boarded the appropriate First Class car (marked in English) but I couldn't locate my seat, as all the interior numbers were written only in Burmese. A local offered to help, but looked at my ticket upside down, and promptly placed me in the wrong spot.  A Buddhist monk dressed in bright orange robes who spoke some English strolled over to correct the mistake.
When the train halted for a long stop midway through the journey, I stepped outside to admire the jungled mountain view.  A couple other foreigners who must have boarded the train at its origin in Mandalay emerged from a rear car.   They strode forward toward the locomotive as if they owned it, so I followed.  They waved up to the engineer, who smiled, and invited us all to ride with him in the cabin.
I scanned the control panel, reading the odometer at 400,000 miles.  If my calculations were correct, at 12 miles per hour, and one trip a day, the locomotive had been in service approximately 300 years.  It looked it.  The windshield was cracked in several places, the yellowing tape criss-crossing the scratched glass making it seem as if we were sightseeing through a broken snorkel visor.  Many of the instruments were held together by other forms of tape, wire, and a paisley coating of betel nut spittle.
The engineer's assistant stood in the left side of the crowded cockpit, but suddenly decided he needed to change position..  Rather than pushing through the foreigners, he crawled outside the engine, head bobbing in front of the windshield, his hands clinging to a grille as the train continued along the tracks.  Once on the other side, he poked at a few switches, then hung out the door until the next stop, where he escorted us back to our regular seats.
When we approached the bridge, three hours into the trip, locals and foreigners alike began rising from their seats, jostling for views from the windows.  Just as Paul Theroux wrote in The Great Railway Bazaar in 1973,  the Viaduct was "a monster of silver geometry... its presence there was bizarre, this manmade thing in so remote a place."  The train slowed for the crossing, perhaps to give us a better view, perhaps to ease the strain on the hundred year old structure.
The omnipresent Burmese military forbid picture taking of the bridge, presumably because they think insurgents will use the photos as visual aids for an attack.  Soldiers rode on the train, sat in a guardhouse midway through the span, and were camped somewhere underneath it.  At Gokteik Station, prior to the bridge, passengers can leave the train to get a better view, but shouldn't wander too far, as landmines are rumored to have been planted in the vicinity.
I ignored the picture taking rule, both at the station and while riding on the bridge.  As I did so, an old military minder on the train half-heartedly reprimanded me.  We went through a series of: "No pictures,"  "Sorry,"   "No,"  "Oh, oops, sorry,"  "You, no, no,"  "I'm sorry," until we reached the other end of the bridge, where he returned to his chair to nap.
Three hours later, the train pulled into the village of Hsipaw, a nice point to exit and explore some of the regional food, culture, and history.  I later returned to the northern capital of Mandalay by bus, in a quicker, but less scenic ride.
The rail trip to Gokteik was a slow, bone rattling journey, but a rewarding one.  In addition to the impressive bridge, the trip is a step back in time, with the surrounding jungle, pagodas, and itinerant vendors along the rails a theater of sights and sounds left unchanged from Orwell's time.
							View from the Goktaik bridge... careful, don't let them see you take the shot
	Practical Information:
	Yangoon, the capital, is the only real port of entry into Myanmar.  Visas are needed for all foreign visitors, and are good for up to a month.
	A train trip from Yangoon to the northern city of Mandalay takes about 15 hours to cover the 650 kilometers, prices range from $20-$60.  Trains a in better shape than those on the Gokteik line, and include sleeping cars.  Travelers can also cover the distance in a one hour plane ride for about $150.   Buses connect most cities, are cheaper, and generally travel faster than the trains.
	The Mandalay -Gokteik train (the 131up) leaves Mandalay around 4:45 AM (buy tickets the day before for $8 at Mandalay Station).  It takes about seven hours to reach the bridge, and three more to the first decent town after the bridge (Hsipaw).
	From Pyin U Lwin, midway on the rail line, a ticket to Hsipaw costs $4 for 1st class, the trip takes about three hours, trains leave twice a day, once around 5:30 AM, the second around 8AM.
	Keep in mind all prices, departure and transit times in Burma are highly variable, as is the kyat-dollar exchange rate.  Most foreigners are quoted "special" dollar prices for transport which are double the local fare, and not subject to negotiation.
	The tickets, and the ticket counters are likely to only have information in Burmese.  No worry, at any station English-speaking touts will find you within seconds and offer to arrange your travel, slipping in a small service fee along the way.  Many full service tour agencies arrange all-inclusive trips from city to city, including trips over the Gokteik Viaduct.
	Websites for information about travel in Myanmar/Burma include:
	The Lonely Planet guidebook website: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/south_east_asia/myanmar/
	http://www.myanmartourex.com/train.html displays current train schedules, offers package trips, and lists current information about the country
	; http://travel.state.gov/burma.html:  The U.S. State Department official guide to the country with visa, travel safety advisory information
	-  The official Myanmar government site:  www.myanmar.com  (read this with a grain of salt, as it is run by the ruling military junta)