My Weekly Powerup | #club100 | Living in a world of water with floating villages and gardens – Myanmar | #steemexclusive / 18 photos

A visit to Myanmar should definitly include a visit to Inle Lake, one of Myanmars iconic destination. The lake is home to the Intha people who lives on the lake in floating villages. It's quite a unique experience to mooe slowly around the villages, gardens, workshops and monasteries in a boat. The peoples life is concentrated around the water. Besides mooving around by boat, there bridges and boardwalks constructed of bamboo, that connects houses and workshops. When in Myanmar, we spent three days on the lake. We had a boats man who took uso ut on the water everyday. We made some stops at temples and craft villages. You will have an opportunity to watch the silversmith, weavers, woodcarvers etc, working on their traditional, handmade crafts, which is for sale for both locals and tourists.

The main attractions on Inle Lake are the floating gardens and villages. The houses don’t acutally float. They are built on stilts. But the gardens do float. The way both the houses and the gardens are built shows that they are constructed in a way that makes them addapt to life on the water.

Inle Lake has a length of 22 kilometers, which makes it the second largest lake in the country. It has an average depth of one and a half metres. But that is in the dry season. During the monsoon, the depth increases to approx. the double. That is the reason why the houses are built on stilts. At the northern end is the town of Nyaungshwe. It was from here that we took a boat to our resort, which is also built on stilts on the lake. As it is on the eastern shore, we got a couple of lovely sunsets and fell asleep to the lapping of the water right below us.

The houses on stilts are built with walls made of bamboo strips woven together and almost look like mats. Because the water level varies throughout the seasons, a house on stilts has an advantage. It wont't be affecting by the water level. The light bamboo walls has another benefit. The are airy. There are some small opennings that provide air to get through. Another thing we learned from our boats man / guide, is that evaporated water has a cooling effect on the air. I was in Myanmar in the month of November, so it wasn't to hot. Actually the nights were rather cold.

The floating gardens is just a fascinating as the villages. These gardens are actually floating! The benefits of growing vegetables in floating gardens, is the fact that they move with the water level. The rise and fall of the water won't affect the gardens. They will never be flooded. Tomatoes are one of the crops the lake is known for. We had all our meals at our resort, so we had vegetables from the day every day.

A short visit, but since we spent our days in a boat, I feel as if we had enough time to enjoy this part of Myanmar.