
Who: Sleeping Monk
Where: Inthein’s Nyaung Ohak hamlet, Inle Lake, Myanmar
When: After a long boat trip that started before dawn
We sat there silently, sipping tea and munching on the foot wide rice crackers he had given us.
He was an older monk who lives in a monastery at the top of a round hill filled with crumbling stupas atop Inthein’s Nyaung Ohak hamlet.
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We had just awakened him, unwittingly, when we tried to open the monastery’s door. Roused, he smiled gently when he saw us and then went in to grab a pot of tea, three glasses and motioned for us to sit.
He had no English and we had no Burmese. Silent for fifteen minutes or so, looking at the crumbling stupa remains that were his backyard, we shared time, tea, but not words.
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It was peaceful.
It had been a wrong turn.
It was another Myanmar moment of serendipity.
You can expect several a day.

Photography: Peter Kachergis
This article is an adaptation of one published earlier in Splash magazines.