Ayeyarwady Irrawaddy River Life Irrawaddy Burmese

Irrawaddy river life, Ayeyarwady, Irrawaddy dolphins

Life on the river

hasn't changed since hundreds of years only from time to time technology move in when vessels got an engine. People are bathing in the morning and late afternoon, they drink the water, they carry the jars to their houses, thats the water used for every pupose.

On certain parts of the river, natably around shwebo and Bhamo gold is washed out from the earth, during the dry season the river banks are high put form the brown, mussy water.

Vessels and rafts with glazed jars slowly move downstream, they also move large quantities of paddy and other goods. Boats bring cattle and buffaloes to be sold further south. But life on the brown stream does not really begin before the rise of the water which comes with the monsoon rains, before it was shallow now it’s mighty. The bare sandbanks disappear and bigger vessels can navigate.

The shifting sandbanks are the main problem for bigger vessels to navigate the Irrawaddy that’s the reason why bamboo rafts are very common, it almost impossible to see any Irrawaddy dolphins anymore.

Irrawaddy river life Flotilla Steamer

During English colonial times

a officer of the Irrawaddy Flotilla company came at the beginning of monsoon and marked the navigable channel on the river with countless buoys. The Flotilla Company was the number one on the Irrawaddy, its steamers moved the goods and were the base of trade, every hamlet and town along the river's course for about nine hundred miles was served.

English War Ships in the Irrawaddy River Delta

English War Ships in the Irrawaddy Delta

Gliding on the murky water of the Irrawaddy Burmese

from time to time pagodas and temples appear in the distance, often on the peak of a hill, the nearer ones are cut in dark outlines against the sky ; the most distant are so faint that they seem like the unreal fabrics of a city of dreams, more.