Nyaungshwe

Nyaungshwe was the seat of one of the Shan principalities that ruled the plateau for centuries under hereditary princes, the saopha. Its state, known as Yawnghwe, took in the lake and the hills around it, and the wooden and brick palace of its ruling family still stands at the edge of the town. The Shan states paid tribute to Burmese kings but ran their own courts, taxes and militias, and after Britain annexed Upper Burma in 1885–86 they were administered separately from Burma proper, with the princes keeping their thrones.

The lake below the town was farmed long before that by the Intha, who built villages on stilts, cut floating beds of weed and silt to grow vegetables, and developed the leg-rowing style that leaves the hands free for a net. Nyaungshwe was their market and the point where lake traffic met the roads to Taunggyi and the west.

The last saopha of Yawnghwe, Sao Shwe Thaik, became the first president of independent Burma in 1948; his residence in the town, the haw, is now a museum. The princes gave up their powers in 1959, and after the 1962 coup, in which he was arrested and died in prison, the old order ended. From the 1990s the town became the main base for visitors to Inle Lake, and rows of guesthouses, restaurants and boat jetties grew up in a place that had been a quiet market town; the tourist economy that resulted has been sharply reduced since 2021.

The lake's people are the Intha, Burmese-speaking Buddhists of Tibeto-Burman origin whose villages stand on piles over the water and whose daily work — rowing, fishing, tending the floating gardens — is the image most associated with Myanmar after Bagan. In the surrounding hills live Pa-O, recognisable by dark tunics and bright headcloths, Danu, Taungyo and Shan, and market days bring them all down to the towns around the shore.

Religious life turns on the lake's pagodas. The Phaung Daw U festival in autumn, when the gilded images travel between villages on a barge towed by lines of leg-rowers, is the biggest event of the year on the plateau, followed in November by the hot-air balloon festival at Taunggyi, where teams build and launch paper balloons at the full moon. The five-day rotating market, which moves from village to village around the lake, still sets the local week.

Craft is part of the lake's identity: silk and cotton weaving, including cloth spun from lotus stem fibre, silverwork, boatbuilding, blacksmithing and the making of cheroots. These workshops have long been part of what visitors are shown, and they remain working businesses. Manners are those of Buddhist Myanmar — quiet voices, modest dress, elders greeted first, and the monastery at the centre of village life.

Nyaungshwe town has about 14,000 residents, with many more in the villages of its township around the lake shore and on the water. The economy rests on farming, fishing and, before 2021, on visitors: tomatoes from the floating gardens are trucked across the country, and rice, garlic, vegetables and sugarcane grow on the plain at the head of the lake.

The day starts before dawn, when boats leave the jetties and the market fills; by mid-morning the streets are quiet, and the heat of the afternoon is spent indoors before a second round of activity in the evening. Most people travel by motorcycle, bicycle or boat, and children from lake villages go to school by canoe. Houses on the water are built of wood and bamboo on piles, reached by narrow channels rather than streets.

The lake itself is the town's main worry. Silt from cleared hillsides, fertiliser and pesticide from the floating gardens and the spread of water hyacinth have reduced its depth and water quality, and dry-season levels have fallen. Since 2021 the collapse of tourism has removed the income of guesthouses, boat drivers, guides and restaurants, and electricity, fuel and internet are unreliable. Many younger people have gone to work in Thailand, and the money they send back supports households in the villages.

Shan cooking is the region's best known, and Nyaungshwe is a good place to eat it. Shan khauk swe is the staple: flat rice noodles either in a light broth or tossed with a sauce of tomato and minced pork or chicken, topped with pickled mustard greens, crushed peanuts and garlic oil. Htamin jin, the Shan or Intha rice salad, is rice kneaded with tomato and flaked fish or potato into balls, dressed with fried onion oil and eaten with garlic chives and crisp pork skin.

Tofu here is not made from soya but from chickpea or yellow pea flour. To hpu is eaten in slices in salads, fried in sticks, or served warm as to hpu nway, a thick golden porridge poured over noodles at breakfast. The lake supplies carp and other freshwater fish, grilled or stuffed with herbs and steamed, and Inle's tomatoes appear in salads dressed with peanut, sesame and lime.

Beyond the Shan dishes, the national staples are everywhere: mohinga fish soup in the morning, laphet thoke tea-leaf salad with fried beans and sesame, and curries with rice, soup and a tray of vegetables. Tea is grown on the plateau, and teashops serve it strong and sweet with condensed milk. A winery near the lake, Red Mountain Estate, makes wine, an unusual local product in a country where beer and rice spirits are the usual drinks.