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We break our own rules of travel: although we’ve vowed to go slowly, spend at least a week in each place, we set off on a hurried nine-day road trip through Upper Burma, pinballing to a new destination almost every night. It’s unwise but necessary in a country where trains halt repeatedly, run out of fuel, and take twice the scheduled time to get anywhere, while buses lumber along at thirty kilometers per hour.

At the noodle shop, a Burmese tour guide overhears our itinerary and lifts his eyebrows. Bring two spare tires, he warns.

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Our driver, Ko Ye, is twenty-three, with an earnest boy-next-door face and neatly tamped-down hair, save for a cowlick at the back. His younger brother, Ko Zaw, is twenty and groggy, as if abruptly woken up; he tags along sheepishly, helping with the bags and saying not a word. Their “auntie” comes to our guesthouse to see them off, and stands waving on the sidewalk. Eventually we figure out that she is not an actual relative, but their boss, the owner of the battered van—only ten years old, so new by local standards—in which we prepare to tackle the notoriously potholed, mostly unpaved, bone-shocking roads of Burma.

It takes an hour just to get out of the city, because first we have to fill the tank, which entails a convoluted navigation to a stall selling gasoline out of tall plastic bottles that in a previous life contained Coca-Cola. En route, we pass the massive gold hive of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the most hallowed and photographed temple in Burma, thronged by hundreds of worshippers; and then, farther out, the Drugs Eradication Museum, a sprawling three-story testament to the government’s anti-narcotic efforts, which consist mainly of large signs posted near major monuments proclaiming, “Drugs trafficking is a criminal offense punishable by death.” Meanwhile, the junta, bankrupt by international sanctions, relies on the opium warlords of the north to build roads and keep the country afloat.

Just outside Rangoon, Ko Ye pulls off at a roadside shrine to pay homage to the nat, or spirit, who watches over automobiles. The priest hands him red and white satin ribbons and strings of jasmine, which he ties behind the rearview mirror. As the priest sprinkles water on the windshield, chanting, Ko Ye puts the car in reverse, rolls back a few feet, then forward, flashing his headlights. He repeats this three times, as if the car were prostrating itself.

Blessed, we hit the road.

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Stones crackle under the tires, but the ride is surprisingly smooth. Damp green fields fan out on either side. We count stupas: tiny ones half-buried in the grass, towering ruins marooned in empty plains, distant spires gleaming in the mountains. Long avenues of trees bow over us, branches groomed into interlocking arches. In front of temples, loudspeakers blare sacred songs and women line up with silver bowls, clamoring at passing cars; occasionally Ko Ye rolls down the window and drops a few bills of kyat.

Late in the day, the car overheats, and we scramble out and stand under the relentless sun, waiting for it to cool down. Too much air conditioning, Ko Ye explains brightly. I am strategically depriving myself of water to avoid having to use the bathroom along the way, and the hundred-degree heat is nauseating. I suddenly pity the British colonialists, driven mad by their torrid empire. Army convoys jolt by, truck after truck of young soldiers, staring.

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The first night we pay our respects to the Golden Rock of Mount Kyaiktiyo, the second holiest site in Burma, accessible only by a wobbling truck overloaded with pilgrims, gears crunching around the jackknife curves. At the top, the sacred rock is massive and shining, covered entirely in gold leaf and precariously suspended—balanced on a hair of the Buddha, they say—over the valley below.

Heading north, we overnight in Taungoo, a town in the middle of nowhere that earns mention in the guidebook for its single charming guesthouse, made of ruddy, glistening teak and run by a family of doctors. In the morning, they serve us a twelve-course breakfast, each dish a variation on fried dough or sticky rice, and papaya, watermelon, bananas, and oranges from their garden. We watch the sun rise over the rice paddies, then clamber into the van to get an early start, so we won’t arrive in Inle Lake after dark. Ko Ye promises that it’s only an eight-hour drive, and we valiantly agree to forego air conditioning, to keep the car from overheating as it scales the mountains.

For the first six hours, we’re cheerful. We turn off the main highway onto an unsealed road, scraping through dry desert plains. In the distance, a chain of sheer peaks marks the border of Shan State, home to some of the fiercest insurgents in Burma and still largely off-limits to foreigners. At the foot of the mountains we stop at another nat shrine for a blessing, replenishing the wilted flowers hanging from the rearview mirror.

Our wheels grind uphill. The road is too narrow for two cars to pass, and we lag behind giant trucks, swaying in their surf of dust, their sides painted with landscapes utterly alien to our desiccated surroundings: snowy peaks, rivers gushing through fluorescent-green valleys, starfish-studded beaches. Other trucks slump in corners, broken down, with their drivers asleep beneath them, between the wheels, the only available shade. We squeeze past, hugging the edge of the cliff.

Seven hours in, I start to worry. All the signs are in Burmese. I consult the map, hoping that we’ve already passed the town of Kalaw, but nothing on the way has resembled the quaint, British colonial hill station described in the guidebook. A logging crew fells a tree directly in our path, and we must wait, idling, while they hack it apart. Picking up speed downhill, we almost crash into a squad of children, toying with a dead snake, flattened by a truck. We bottom out in a brown valley, chug up the next mountain, and are about to turn a corner when something explodes. A dozing man jumps up and madly flags us down: road workers are dynamiting the road.

At four o’clock, when we’ve been on the road for the predicted eight hours, I ask Ko Ye where we are, and he tells me Kalaw is coming up next. This is a disaster, because it’s at least another two hours from Kalaw to Inle Lake.

How much farther? I ask, aghast. Three hours, he says.

We sit in silence. I stare brutally out the window, trying not to get sick as the road jags and veers. The sun has gone slack, beginning its slow withdrawal. The mountains are barren, treeless. I calculate the odds of toxic-shock syndrome: it’s the second and heaviest day of my period, and there’s nowhere to stop and change tampons, certainly not with any hygiene, discretion, or dignity. The van pitches and wallows, red dust sifting through the windows, graining the air.

After an hour, Ko Ye timidly announces that we’re in Kalaw; there is no celebration. The road descends. We stop at a gas station to check the tires, and I march off to the public bathroom, expecting horror. Instead, it’s fine—unlit and gray in the growing dark, but clean. Alone, I collect myself, talk myself down from my thundery mood: it’s only another two hours, nothing can be done, let it go.

When I return to the car, I’m almost serene. Ahrin has bought treats, either to distract or to mollify me: potato chips, fried peas, mysterious chewy cakes. We start ascending again, heading for the next town, which according to the guidebook is famous for its brothels. We peer through the windows, revived by voyeurism, searching for nefarious activity.

Something slams into the back of the van. We rock forward. I snap my head back, but there’s nothing behind us, and then I see the heap in the middle of the road: a motorcycle, upturned, one wheel still circling, and two men twisted on the asphalt. Ahrin is already out of the car, running to help, pulling the men to the side of the road for safety. One of them staggers and shouts, the strap of his cheap plastic helmet dangling under his chin, a gash down his left cheek and his eyes threaded with red: he’s drunk. The other man’s helmet is half shattered, and he can’t stand up; he tips backwards into a low squat, knees up to his shoulders, mouth full of blood. His front teeth have stabbed through his lip.

The van is barely harmed, with just a dent in the fender. I pace, staying close to the car, primed for a quick getaway. There’s a knot of men now: Ahrin speaking in loud, clearly articulated English that no one understands; our driver, meek, and his tongue-tied brother; stray passersby, shaking their heads; the drunk, hostile motorcyclist and his drunk, stupefied compatriot, who keeps trying to mount the bike and drive off. After much conferral, Ahrin comes over and tells me that we’re going to have to wait here while Ko Ye takes the men to the hospital.

I’m enraged. The men are drunk, hit us because they weren’t paying attention, and they can bleed to death in the road for all I care. I climb back into the car, as if to guard it against these invaders, and start to cry. Stricken by my tears, Ko Ye also starts to cry. The biker with a bloody mouth makes a choking sound and throws up twelve times.

Two policemen pull up on a single motorcycle, one perched behind the other, and inform us that we’ll have to follow them to the station and file a report. They lift the injured biker by the elbows and pile him on their motorcycle; he droops, sandwiched between them.

We trail them in the van, first to the hospital, then to the police station. I stay in the car. Outside, Ahrin is dispensing cigarettes. The police are congenial, agree that it was the other guys’ fault, but still it drags on and on. It’s past six, too dark now to take shelter in the pages of the guidebook, and the Ipod battery is dead, and mosquito repellent has spilled all over the inside of my bag. I stare at nothing, weeping. Ahrin has befriended the commandant, who is also drunk and grins at me through the open van door, pointing at Ahrin: “Handsome!” He speaks chiefly in adjectives, insisting to Ahrin, “Peaceful, peaceful.”

When we finally leave, it’s almost seven. There are no streetlamps. Trucks and motorcycles charge towards us with blinding high beams, then cut their lights just as they reach striking distance. Fires spread through the dark, smoking on invisible hills, where farmers are clearing fields to make way for new crops. I think, we will never arrive, and although this is melodramatic and untrue, it makes me strangely calm. Everything is simplified: only this car, this unlit road. Around us, the hills burn.

We are warned by other travellers before we leave for Rangoon that after four decades of military dictatorship the Burmese are a depressed, sullen people, too frightened to talk to foreigners. We are advised not to identify ourselves as writers or photographers, and to purge our backpacks of potentially seditious materials, which means any book about Burma published in the West since 1962, when General Ne Win seized power and cut off contact with the outside world. We are informed that we will not be able to access e-mail or make international phone calls, except at the jaw-dropping price of seven dollars a minute. Finally, we are sternly reminded that, despite long-term sanctions by Western nations, the junta formerly known as SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) and today more congenially named SPDC (State Peace Development Council) continues to imprison activists, dispossess tribal minorities, and collude with drug warlords.

We are undeterred. Perhaps, secretly, these dire reports excite us. We stock up on toothpaste, sun block, Haruki Murakami novels, packets of almonds. At the last minute, in the vast duty-free halls of Bangkok International, we arm ourselves with a carton of cigarettes, for bribes.

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The Rangoon airport is tiny, with only one runway, barely big enough for a 737. A solitary baggage carousel, stalled, lies just beyond the immigration counters. We brace ourselves for our first encounter with Burmese bureaucracy, but the officials who take our passports turn out to be beaming young women in crisp blouses and skirts, wearing high heels with navy blue socks; they bow their heads delightedly at our labored pronunciation of “mingalar ba” (hello). In the swarm of French and German package tourists, no one bothers to search our backpacks.

The driver sent by the guesthouse is of Indian descent, tall with tousled hair and grinning hugely; he introduces himself as David, divulges that he’s a Baptist but married to a Catholic, and slips in a cassette: “Hotel California.” All the cars on the road are small and slightly bruised, rattling Toyotas and precarious, listing Fiats and stubby Mazda trucks over thirty years old. None of the buildings are taller than ten stories. Squashed in the backseat, we glimpse leafy suburbs where sprawling mansions with plantation-style Grecian columns defy Burma’s status as one of the poorest countries in the world. “V.I.P.s,” David explains, and fast-forwards the tape to a Burmese cover of “No Woman Don’t Cry.” As we veer into downtown, he volunteers his services for the rest of our stay. “I am Christian, you are Christian,” he exults. “I help you!”

Our guesthouse is in the heart of the Rangoon, where traffic eddies around the gilded dome of the Sule Pagoda. For twenty-four dollars a night (no one wants kyat, which currently trade at eight hundred sixty to the dollar) we get a room on the sixth floor, overlooking City Hall. The ceiling sags, the mattress springs are half broken, and everything smells of mold; the bathroom is the usual showerhead-toilet-sink combo with a drain in the middle of the floor and a permanent puddle. Still, there’s the view, and a complimentary bottle of mineral water (the label reads: Ultra-Violeted), and, we’re shocked to discover, satellite TV, complete with BBC News and HBO. When I crane my head out the window I can see the bright helmet of the pagoda, and beyond, the trees of Mahabandoola Park, where the Army shot student protestors in 1988. Below, monks trot along the sidewalk, brandishing huge velvet fans against the sun, while nuns float by under wooden parasols painted with flowers.

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We quickly learn to sprint when we cross the street, as drivers accelerate at the sight of pedestrians. A promenade of small fluffy trees leads to City Hall, a weathered yellow building whose steps are guarded by two green chinthes, lion-dragons, their tapered snouts flaring in the air. As expected, there are police barricades wrapped in barbed wire (Burma’s main export), but they’ve been pushed to the side and lean uselessly against a wall, ignored by the crowd hurrying past. We keep an eye out for soldiers, massed in platoons and hoisting AK-47s, but instead find them scattered, toting decrepit weapons and sweating in their coarse green uniforms, the hems of their pants squeezed into calf-high suede boots.

Everyone else wears flip-flops, exposing browned, hardened feet. Legs are hidden under sarong-like longyi which women tie at the side of the waist and men knot over their bellies, tucking in their button-down shirts. Women paint their faces with a faint yellow sandalwood paste, in freeform whorls or severe rectangles on cheeks, foreheads, chins, some with whole faces gone pale and cakey, others with only two delicate strokes under the eyes.

Child monks march single-file through the streets, clutching bulbous black lacquer alms bowls as big as their heads. Rock music bursts from open shop doors, mixing with the chime of sugarcane presses on the sidewalk, churning out cloudy green juice, and the water seller banging a cup against a metal pail. Pink-robed little nuns with shaved, badly nicked heads halt in front of shops and chant with half-shut eyes until someone hurries forward with a few bills of kyat.

“Chicken! Chicken!” a boy shrieks, thrusting a falcon at us, its leg tied to his wrist with string. A shirtless, bramble-haired ascetic drags a pile of coconuts through the crowd, attached to his back by ropes and hooks pierced through the skin. Around him, couples stroll hand in hand and cozy up under sun umbrellas, unimpressed. In the atrium of a deserted mini-mall, a model in a sequinned evening gown sashays down the runway holding aloft a mannequin torso outfitted in lingerie. Monks smoke on street corners, snap gum, peer from behind rimless sunglasses at a sidewalk display of toy cars and battery-powered flyswatters. Nearby, sleepy men sit behind fold-out tables stacked with boxes of condoms.

We search for hints of depression. We pass thronged Buddhist shrines, Bengali mosques, Hindu temples, a synagogue, an Armenian church. People laugh, pray, snort, hawk up spit, chatter at high speed, and eat with fierce conviction. Food is everywhere, miniature eggs frying in cast-iron pans indented with rows of shallow cups, ruffly parathas leaking oil, entire blocks devoted to the selling of bananas. Teashops spill out onto sidewalks, child-size stools clustered around low tables, each with its own dented aluminum teapot. A man carries a long pole balanced on his shoulder, with a wok and lit stove dangling from one end; he stirs the hot oil as he teeters along. We ponder the offerings in the window of a spotlit, marble-floored cafe: mayonnaise bread, kim chee sandwiches, mutton puffs.

At the intersection between Rangoon’s only two skyscrapers, we spot a large red sign that’s almost completely hidden by trees, but we can tell from the one visible word—“stooges”—that it’s government propaganda. A girl unfurls her stash of postcards, and when we refuse she simply wanders off; a boy asks politely if we’d like to change money, then disappears. After the touts of India, they seem innocent. According to a headline in that morning’s Mynamar Times, on display in the guesthouse lobby, only seven hundred thousand tourists visited Burma last year; perhaps we’re still unfamiliar enough to escape contempt.

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There are curious glances, the occasional hello. People look right in our eyes and smile. No one scurries away in terror. After a few days, the boy who keeps asking us to change money suddenly stops mid-spiel and says, “I know you,” and lets us be. When bird droppings fall on Ahrin’s head, the sidewalk book-seller springs up with a handful of tissues.

I keep comparing Burma to India and Thailand, its neighbors and our last two destinations. After India, we were exhausted by the constant siege of people, the children who clung grimly to our clothes, determined to outlast our capacity to say “no.” Thailand was a relief, exquisite and aloof: we were invisible in its sea of farangs, arousing no interest or curiosity in passersby; even the beggars seemed unwilling to interrupt us, sitting silently in the sealed glass chutes leading from one mall to another, waiting for dropped coins with averted eyes. But then we got lonely. We missed India, how we were embraced, invited home by perfect strangers, pelted with questions about our lives. Burma seems somewhere in between: gentler than India, warmer than Thailand.

We follow the trail of books, which are sold by the hundreds on every corner: beaten-up paperbacks from half a century ago, with pulpy covers of long-eyelashed vamps (“The Case of the Curious Coquette”), and obscure stapled pamphlets (“Palmistry for Pleasure and Profit”). I buy a copy of George Orwell’s “Burmese Days” that’s been Xeroxed off the original Penguin edition, with all the text—including the cover and spine—slightly askew. Later, in an English-language bookstore on a quiet side street, I’m startled to find a whole shelf of Western books that are openly critical of the military regime, stocked behind glass but in plain sight.

We turn down narrow alleys where strings dangle from turquoise and yellow balconies, with clips on the end for hauling up mail and groceries; tug on one, and a bell rings. A sign promises Tan & Freckle Remover Cream. Under a tree, a woman lays out three beige telephones, wires trailing up into the branches: the local version of the phone booth. Everyone we meet has a cellphone, although when we try to call them the numbers are invariably out of order.

Stopping at a photo studio, we talk a long while with the proprietor, a Hindu originally from Bombay, who is the second person we’ve met in the past five months who actually likes President Bush. “He’ll teach those Muslims a lesson,” he mutters darkly. A few blocks over, we’re invited into a small gym run by the former three-time Mr. Burma, who at some sixty years old is still fantastically muscled, with gleaming teeth. A few women are lifting rusty weights barefoot, having left their shoes at their door, in the Burmese custom. There’s one treadmill, designed for walking, not running, and manually operated, with a belt that’s supposed to turn under the pressure of the feet; a woman carefully mounts the ramp and tries to walk, but the belt jams after a single step.

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At breakfast, I leaf through the New Light of Myanmar, the government newspaper, which reprints daily the mantra of the regime:

People’s Desire
Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views
Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation
Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State
Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy

Below this is a report, with accompanying photo, on the He & She Fashion Co. runway show, which provides no description of the clothes but notes that they are “now available at reasonable prices.” Meanwhile, the supposedly independent Myanmar Times comes out only once a week, and I read it with a sense of déjà vu: the big news stories are the declaration of martial law in Nepal and Hillary Clinton fainting at the podium, both of which happened last month. The byline “Internet,” appended to most articles, does not inspire confidence.

Outside, Chinese New Year lions shimmy to crashing cymbals, so many of them that one lion must wait its turn while another pounces and bucks. We stop by the cybercafé to check our e-mail; so far we’ve had no problem with access, since apparently the government blocks only free services like Yahoo and Hotmail. I’ve grown complacent, and today I write to a friend using the phrase “oppressed country.” When I hit send, the message disappears and I’m shunted to a white screen that informs me access is denied, due to banned content. Then, when I attempt to post to the blog, my text is devoured, perhaps due to the offending word “junta.”

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At night, teen-agers hang out on the pedestrian overpass, smoking and dangling their feet above the cars. Below, a man sits cross-legged on a traffic island, reading under the streetlight. Teashops claim large swathes of sidewalk, lit by long fluorescent bulbs strung up vertically on trees and walls, with TVs rolled out on wheeled carts, playing Burmese hip-hop videos.

We’re transfixed by the sight of girls in a bar, parading down a makeshift catwalk in denim miniskirts under a banner that proclaims Emperor Top Model Fashion Show. The girls stalk woodenly through the dim, cavernous hall while the waitresses clap and cheer, trying to drum up support from the silent audience. Every now and then, men rise and drift towards the karaoke room.

Across the street, the Kyaw Music Pub is better lit and emptier, although their girls seem prettier to me. A posted schedule lists the acts by name: Silver Comet, Diamond Point, Ladies. On the runway, girls dressed demurely in white collared shirts and flowy skirts wobble to the edge and swivel. They follow a strict, unwavering choreography, taking cautious steps and turning painfully counterclockwise, some with glazed smiles, others horrified. Men buy gaudy-colored tinsel boas from a stand in the corner, and a waiter jumps up on the stage and drapes them over the chosen girls.

While the models change costume, other girls come out and sing. One, tiny and muscular in a clingy halter top and low-slung plaid bellbottoms, with jagged, punky hair and a grommet-studded choker around her neck, belts “Making Love (Out of Nothing at All)” in Burmese. She is awful, and mesmerizing. The men ignore her, murmuring among themselves. At the back of the bar, I can see the models furtively handing their tinsel boas back to the shop, where they can be purchased again. The singer launches into another key, one fist punching her belly in fear. Her mouth almost engulfs the microphone.

Outside, we can still hear her. At the curb, girls in short black dresses sit in the back of a truck, wolfing down bowls of noodles. Their faces glitter. The song follows us all the way down the block, the high notes scraping the air. Turning the corner back to the guesthouse, we look up and see two soldiers standing on our roof.

Off to Burma, and into silence: unless I can figure out a way around the junta's firewalls, there will be no posts for the next three weeks. Will write when we resurface.