CIRCULAR RAILWAY (YANGON, MYANMAR)

Inside any public transportation in the world you can see a pretty accurate portrait of the society where it belongs. A trip on the metro of any city in the world gives you a brush of how middle class, which means most of the people, of that city behaves and interacts with their siblings. In Yangon city, at the south of Myanmar, there is a very special example of it. A circular train makes laps from the very deepest heart of the city, place for young people’s hang outs, studies and businesses, to the countryside bordering the city, where the salary men and women carry all the collected grain and vegetables along the day.

  From my first step in the car of the train, I felt truly welcomed by all the passengers. They kept smiling at me and greeting, apparently curious for seeing such a tall man and with those strange clothes. I took my camera and I was a kind of fun for some of the Burmese people, no matter young or old, male or female, many of them offered themselves to be the protagonists of one of my pictures. When the train got full, some people woke up from their seats to offer them to me. They were kind like that, even the elder ones. I gently declined they offer, I thought they need it more than me, plus I was enjoying walking around the cars of the train. Sometimes, food from the homemade meals, either with noodles or rice, some people were eating was offered to me. I wonder why, maybe is because Myanmar opened their borders to the tourist recently and seeing foreigner visitors is exciting for locals, or maybe is just their nature, but Burmese people are extremely kind and friendly.




 I looked around and I saw kids, mothers, elder people, young fashionable students, Buddhist monks dressed in garnet, nuns in pink, and I see a girl with an extremely exotic beauty staring at me with her deep intense black eyes. After a few seconds staring each other, I ask her to be in one of my pictures. She assents with a shy smile and I still get seduced every time I look at the picture taken. The train makes many stops along the way, but there is one special stop because the loud noise of voices yelling heard coming from outside. It iwas the first stop in the limit of the city, a train station surrounded by corn and wheat fields. The scandal outside were the peasants rushing and organizing the way they had to carry all the foods collected along the day. Sacks full of different vegetables were thrown inside through the windows and then the field workers jumped in too. There was a big contrast between the people coming in now, with all the dust on their clothes and their big hats to get protection from the sun, and the young modern and fashionable students that came in the train at the stops nearby the University of Yangon. No doubt that was an interesting mosaic of faces.
 I’ve spent about three and half hours inside the train to make the whole lap. And every single minute was worth it thanks to the amazing inhabitants of Yangon.