Since that post in 2008, I have been to Costa Rica, Macedonia twice, India three times (Delhi, Chennai, Deradhun and more), Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Myanmar (or Burma, if you like), the Bahamas....did I get them all? How fortunate am I to see what I have seen.
I am in Myanmar. What a country. What a history.
Despite all of my travels, I had the most extraordinary day today, which prompted me to want to remember it as I feel now, unvarnished by the patina of time.
The Nagar Glass Factory. Imagine a cyclone tearing through a glass factory in 2008. Now imagine that, aside from clearing a few pathways through the resultant carnage, nothing has changed since the day Nargis hit. And there you would have the Nagar Glass Factory.
There are several neat write-ups of the history, the owners, and why it's still the way it is here, here, and here.
An experience -- and a place -- I am not likely to forget. A bit haunting, a bit exciting (a treasure hunt!), a bit dangerous (all that broken glass + slippery pathways), and more than a bit sad. In many ways, it's an embodiment of the country that is Myanmar.
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| See that fishie there? |
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| One of the paths, littered with glass on either side. |
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| Look for a woman in a blue shirt in the middle of the photo. She is sanding some things folks have found. Can you see the leather belts around those rusted wheels? |
