From Mandalay to Bagan, January 13, 2019

On a little Indian motorbike called Boxer, I tear myself away from the city, I hurl myself into the landscapes.

At a tollbooth they refuse to let me through:

– No motorbikes! No motorbikes!

So I veer off toward the regional road that follows the course of the Irrawaddy. I ride and it leans: over the bumps and in the curves, along the fields and the trees that remain, under the palms where tappers climb to draw the sap of the toddy that goes to the head. I cross: little browned villages, warped asphalts, a one-lane bridge – on this structure, one must squeeze over to let the trucks pass, their breath snores at us, their tires rough us up. And I glimpse: a man pedalling under a pyramid of bamboo chairs; a herd of skinny cows encroaching on the lanes; a scooter carrying the mutilated carcass of another scooter; a man leading on a rope an enormous and muscled bull; an excavator turning over a dry earth strewn with shreds of plastic; women enthroned on big chairs in the bed of a pickup, travelling like that, faces to the wind; and then one of those narrow-snouted trucks, hoodless engine with exposed belts, diesel clacking and smoking, shaken like a cough.

Ordinary road, grey visions that dazzle me a thousand times more than all the temples of the Kingdom of Bagan.