The Kalaw to Inle trek

Two or three days on foot from the old hill station at Kalaw down to Inle Lake, through Danu, Pa-O, Taung Yo and Palaung farming villages, sleeping in a village house or a monastery hall, and arriving at the lake by boat rather than by car.

Before the detail: Myanmar is available from us on request and subject to conditions on the ground, we assess each enquiry for the specific dates and route, and we decline regularly. This walk sits inside the central corridor we consider workable, and the broader trekking country of northern and eastern Shan State does not. The full position is in our complete Myanmar guide.

The shape of it

The net elevation change is downwards, which sounds easier than it is. The route rolls constantly across a plateau of terraced fields and low ridges, so you climb and descend all day without ever gaining much. Nothing on it is technical, there is no scrambling and there is no exposure.

We build the three-day version by default and we would encourage you to take it, because the extra night is where the walk becomes something other than exercise.

The honest difficulty

Moderate. Not easy, not hard.

What makes it moderate rather than easy is the accumulation: six to eight hours a day, two days in a row, on uneven farm tracks and red dirt roads, carrying a day pack, in heat. Your main bag goes ahead by road to the lake, so you carry water, layers and a camera and nothing else.

What makes it moderate rather than hard is that there is nothing steep or sustained on it. If you can walk for six hours on a hilly footpath at home and be tired but fine, you can do this. If you have not walked further than a mile in a year, the two-day version will hurt on day two and the three-day version will be a good holiday.

The two real difficulties are heat and sun. Long stretches of the route cross open farmland with no shade at all, and by ten in the morning between February and May that is the whole story of the day. We start early for that reason. A hat, long sleeves and more water than you think are not optional, and the guides carry extra water because people always underestimate it.

What the walk is actually like now

Set aside any image of jungle or forest trails. This is farming country and it is walked mostly on the tracks the farmers use.

You go through fields of ginger, chilli, garlic, cabbage, sesame, mustard and, in season, the fields where the crop is being harvested by hand by twenty people in a line. You pass ox carts, and a lot of them are still working carts rather than a picture. You walk a long, dry railway line for a stretch. You cross ridges with views down over the plateau in every direction, which in the clear months of December and January are very good and in March and April are often flattened by haze.

The villages are the substance of it: bamboo and wood houses on stilts, a monastery with a whitewashed stupa, a school you will hear before you see, and old women smoking cheroots who will look at you with mild curiosity and go back to what they were doing.

Two things have changed since the years when this was one of the busiest walks in Southeast Asia. There are far fewer walkers on it, which is the good part, and you can go most of a day now without passing another foreign group. And the infrastructure that grew up around it has thinned out. Some of the guesthouses that used to take walkers no longer operate. Our partners run it with a fixed set of families and monasteries they know, which is why we can say what your night will look like.

The homestays, honestly described

This is the part people are most nervous about and it is the part that is worth doing properly.

A village homestay on this route means a mattress or a thick mat on a wooden floor, in a room with the family or in a room next to them, with a mosquito net and a stack of blankets. Blankets are necessary in December and January when the plateau gets cold at night. There is an outdoor squat toilet. There is a bucket and a scoop of cold water for washing, or a cold shower, and in some houses a bucket of hot water is heated over the fire for you. Electricity is a bulb and it may be on a generator or solar panel that goes off at nine.

A monastery night is a hall, a mat, blankets, and you sleep in a row. The monks get up before you do and you will hear it.

Dinner is cooked by the family: rice, several vegetable dishes, a curry, a soup, tea, and often more food than any of you can eat. It is genuinely good and it is the best meal a lot of people have in Myanmar. Breakfast is fried rice or noodles and tea.

What it is not: it is not a boutique eco-lodge with a shared bathroom. It is somebody’s house. If a night without a private bathroom, on a mat, is not something you want, tell us at the start and we will build the walk as day walks with hotel nights in Kalaw instead, which is a lesser version but an honest one.

When to walk it

November to February. The season, and in most years the only time we run it. Firm dry tracks, long clear views, warm walking by day. Cold at night in Kalaw and in the villages, near 45F (7C) before dawn on the colder mornings and occasionally lower, which catches out people who packed only for the tropics. Bring a warm layer and a hat you can sleep in.

March to May. Hot and dusty on exposed tracks, over 95F (35C) on the plateau in April, and the regional agricultural haze can remove the views entirely. We will run the three-day version with very early starts if your dates are fixed. We would rather you came in December.

June to October. We do not sell it. The tracks turn to deep red mud, the descents get genuinely slippery, and leeches appear in the wetter sections. Some operators run it anyway. We would rather build you a boat day.

More on the calendar in Myanmar month by month.

How it fits into a trip

The walk needs its own days and this is where most itineraries go wrong. Kalaw is a three hour drive from Heho airport or roughly seven hours from Mandalay, the walk is two or three days, and you arrive at Inle at the end of it. Adding it without adding days means removing Bagan or Mandalay, and we would rather you knew that at the planning stage.

The clean arrangement is twelve days: Yangon, Bagan, Mandalay, then Kalaw, the walk, and Inle at the end where the boat drops you. See Kalaw to Inle on foot, 12 days and the length argument in how many days do you need in Myanmar.

The last hour is the reason to walk in this direction rather than the other. You come down off the plateau to a canal at Inthein, get into a long boat, and run out onto the lake past the stilt villages in the late afternoon. Doing it the other way, uphill and ending in a town, is a completely different and worse experience.

What to bring

• Walking shoes you have already worn in. Trail shoes are plenty. Boots are unnecessary
• Two litres of water capacity, and use it
• Sun hat, long-sleeved light shirt, high factor sun cream
• One warm layer and one thin layer for the evening, more in December and January
• A head torch, because the electricity goes off
• A small towel and any toiletries you actually need
• Cash in small notes for tea and snacks along the way, in clean US dollars or exchanged in advance
• A day pack. Everything else goes to the lake by road

Related

• Myanmar: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Kalaw to Inle on foot, 12 days
• Myanmar month by month
• The best two-week route through Myanmar
• All our Myanmar trips

Frequently asked questions