Minhla Myanmar
Myanmar
Frequently Asked Questions
Against the bank at the foot of the village, on the west side of the Irrawaddy in the Magway region. The stop is short, usually two or three hours.
A European-style brick fort still commanding the water: vaulted casemates, artillery platforms and thick red brick facings. It is the call's single, sufficient attraction.
Italian and French engineers, among them Captain Molinari, between 1860 and 1861, for the Konbaung dynasty. Having lost Lower Burma, the kingdom wanted to lock down the river that had become its frontier.
Yes, once, and without success. When the British flotilla arrived in November 1885 during the Third Anglo-Burmese War, the position was taken. Two weeks later Mandalay fell, and with it the kingdom.
Yes, the twin work at Gwegyaung on the opposite bank. Together they were meant to bring crossfire to bear on enemy ships.
Yes, you can walk the cool chambers and worn stairways. Fig trees cling to the parapets and swallows nest in the embrasures where the guns once pointed.
No. Residents see few foreigners and show it with warm curiosity: they greet you, ask where you are from, and some bring out family albums or offer a slice of watermelon.
The market with its baskets of tomatoes, onions and dried fish, sacks of chillies making red patches in the pale dust, and teak houses opening onto courtyards where laundry dries.
The Irrawaddy spreads wide and slow between low banks alternating banana groves, pagodas and hamlets. This is the artery the kings wanted to defend, and the one boats still follow.
For a page of history few textbooks tell: the moment a country independent for centuries fell into a colonial empire, learned on the spot, facing the river where it happened.
