Yet recent mornings here in Yangon have stood out. The light has a quality I’m not used to. At daybreak the sun’s rays seem to filter down through the trees and strike the earth at a different angle than they do in Thailand. This city’s latitude isn’t too much different from Bangkok’s and Chiang Mai’s… perhaps Myanmar’s weird in-between time zone makes this place an exception, like Harry Potter’s Platform 9¾?
New Year’s morning offered up some special magic. A few friends and I chose to welcome 2014 at Mount Popa, an inactive volcano near the center of Myanmar.
We traveled by overnight bus. It was before dawn on the 31st when we arrived. For starters we just practiced the slow art of teashop-sitting. As daylight appeared, the little town at the base of the mountain woke up. Now and then a truck idled in the street, hoping to be noticed. Fruit sellers spread out their produce on little mats, only to abandon them in favor of gossiping by the roundabout. The colors were brighter than in the big city. The birds had more personality.
That afternoon we toured a temple perched up on a kilometer-high pillar that geologists say is a volcanic plug, left over from a long-ago eruption. Locals say this wide rock column is the epicenter for nats, Myanmar's special brand of supernatural beings. Many of these mythical spirits are thought to congregate here, exerting their animist pull on the Burmese Buddhist cosmos. Sunset drew near, and the resident monkeys began to screech. We surely felt there was something extra- about the place.
With only a few hours of bus sleep under our belts, bedtimes were early—to hell with New Year’s Eve. Besides, we set our alarms for 3am. That’s the time you have to be awake and climbing if you want to greet the first rays of the year from the peak of the volcano.
In the dark we took a wrong turn or two. We worried we might arrive too late. No other hikers seemed to have the same idea, so there was nobody to ask except for some dogs we met along the way. They were no help.
Half-light began to make the trail obvious. Grassland replaced forest. We could tell we were getting close.
Enough glow leaked from somewhere to keep us from falling into the crater. It was exactly in between night and day. Officially, 2014 had arrived about six and a half hours earlier.For us, the new year got off to a memorable start when the sun peeped over the horizon, making the soft edges sharp. Bright orange reflected off the cliffs and into the valley. Down where we began, the golden roof of the nat temple glistened.
