became worse . We even had a gentle fall after surviving many unavoidable muddy patches . This one was like peanut butter and caramel mixed … maybe that image came to my mind because we were so hungry .
On these roads , one hundred kilometres would take six and a half hours of gruelling riding in second gear .
Beautiful surrounds . Green as green can be . Bamboo , tall trees , flowering bushes . Idyllic but exhausting . No population and just as we were wondering where on earth we were going to overnight , a sudden turn brought in view a government kind of tourism ‘ guesthouse ’ in the unmapped village of Uka . Not on the map because it is relatively new , an extension of the older village , which became too big .
Uka is beautiful , set on high ground and with houses built the traditional way . It was the end of the day and supplies were not abundant but a meal of two hard-boiled eggs and tea was restoring followed by some kind of home cooked KFC , in this case the “ C ” standing not for chicken but for crow . I ’ m convinced it was a wild bird if a bird it was . Yet still no head-hunters on the horizon except a 90 something year old warrior we visited in his house sitting by the fire over which a bunch of plantains were being smoked .
This warrior was frail and his skin dry and wrinkled , making his tattoos almost invisible , not helped by the dimly lit room .
Beginning to despair of finding any tattooed old warriors we continued to push east and after Mon we struck it lucky .
A lot of asking around we finally came to a place in Phomching where a lovely old fellow was thrilled to show us not only his tattoos but also all his old war paraphernalia . He wore a bronze necklace with five heads and a conical feathered hat . The elaborate blue designs covering
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