More scenes of rural village life in the Shan hills.

 Kalaw's colorful tribal people.

 As usual with Indian-led trekking campaigns, mealtimes were a highlight of the day. In Canada, a backpacker meal typically consists of a bag of freeze-dried food, often marketed by weight and volume rather than taste and style. Packages are known to contain "calories per ounce" information along with a lexicon of similar metrics presumably inspired by the cattle fodder industry. In Belgium, people actually embark on overnight treks with nothing but a giant piece of salami, a hefty wheel of Gouda cheese, and a pair of long Baguettes that stick out of their bags like bazookas. I've seen Europeans last weeks on the trail eating only this.

Trekking with Indians is a whole different story. A pack of rice, some dried lentils, and a few zip lock baggies full of spices is turned into a deliciously dense spicy daal within minutes of the water boiling. And while you are gobbling that down, your guide is making fresh bread on an open fire out of a Tupperware container full of flour. All this and you're only paying twelve dollars a day for the food, accommodation, a professional cook, and a translator. Quite simply, Indian backpackers are making the rest of us look bad. As I thought about my fellow countrymen eating straight out of a soggy carb-loaded bag with a hard plastic spork, and those trail-side Belgians furiously chewing stale bread while attacking flimsy chunks of sweaty cheese with a pocket knife, I couldn't help but feel a tinge of shame for Western trekking culinary traditions.

Burmese-style backpacker checker board.