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SYNOPSIS WORKING TITLE: THE ROAD TO MANDALAY: The Timeless Appeal of Burma's Irrawaddy River
STRUCTURE "The riverbanks are bursting with dense foliage, a green carpet upon the land that will soon desiccate and fade under a choking blanket of dust. For now, tropical palms stand erect and clear against the skyline, forests of banana leaves and fields of rushes hide small dwellings from which the shrill voices of infants cry out in surprise and excited greeting as we pass. The height of the water allows us passage close to the banks. As the light begins to fade from the sky, birdcalls are everywhere, then momentarily overwhelmed by the cacophony of a million crickets. Villagers performing their evening ablutions pause take pause from soaping their bodies to stare at us. Suddenly word spreads and crowds form along paths lining the river, whistling, cheering, waving." Further samples of these notes are attached to this proposal. The introduction will also include a map of the country, detailing the river as it dissects the land. MARKETING ADDITIONAL NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS FROM THE IRRAWADDY RIVER The river is high - crumbling dusty banks that I know will appear later just beginning as the waters start to recede from their monsoon heights. Floodplains are starting to become exposed, great tracts of fertile alluvial soil, where bamboo huts are already making an appearance. Villages make the annual migration closer to the river as the height of the water diminishes. From the top deck, islands are evident in what must be a huge expanse of water during the rains. Great swathes of rushes line the river banks, swaying softly in the barely apparent breeze, green stalks, off-white tops. Sometimes only the ridges of scattered houses are visible through them. *** Kyauk Myoung is a pot making village several hours upstream from Mingun. Vast water jars line the streets and river banks, ready for trans-shipment downstream. Temple festivals are the most common venue for their eventual sale. In a country where most villages have no running water, these items are a necessity for daily life, to be found outside most countryside bamboo houses. The whole process of creating them takes place here - clay is dug from the river banks and the pots are shaped and formed by crafts-persons who sit on the floor, spinning a small wheel set into the ground with their feet. The skilled work is mesmerizing to watch for the speed at which these jars are created, deft hands guiding the clay so that the pots seem to literally grow up from the ground. I place an order for some for the ship, decorative, and one to keep the umbrellas in next to the gangway. Huge kilns are dotted around the village, the firing a round the clock process and either by accident or design, it is pleasing for the ecologically enlightened foreigner to note that all the timber for the kilns that is stacked in huge cords around the village is not from felled trees, but is driftwood. *** As we wait on the ship for the return of our passengers, the skies thicken and grow close, and within minutes we are deluged by an unseasonably late down-pour. Water pours in spouts from the green corrugated roof of the Pandaw, and darkness drops hard. Faces crowd into the barge we are tied up against, hair plastered to foreheads, wet bodies steaming amongst sacks of onions and piles of baskets. From close behind comes the violent blast of an air horn, and we must stand off to let a recently arrived ferry come in to dock. We move off to the middle of the river just as our passengers reach the barge, their soaked expressions aghast at our departure, uncomprehending and bewildered until the ferry starts to maneuver in to position. She seems to slide across the rain troubled waters, her lines blurred through the storm, lights shining bright as passengers crowd her open decks in anticipation of dashing for cover ashore. Within minutes we have returned to our mooring, collected our sodden passengers and in short order we head once again upriver. The searchlight plays off the river banks, a tightly focused ray through which the rain falls like sparks, guiding our passage through the dark. *** By late afternoon we are passing through the second defile. The light is beautiful and the ship's wake mercurial as it fans out behind us. The scenery is far loftier and more dramatic than that which has passed before. The rolling hills and flat plains have given way to sheer cliffs and rocky edifices that line the narrowing river. We maintain a careful course midstream, virtually alone on the river, and our passage seems impossibly quiet. All the passengers are on the top deck, and of those almost all are gathered on the small decking before the bridge. We marvel silently at the density and size of the trees we see, as yet un-denuded by logging, and with macaws and hornbills much in evidence sweeping from treetop to treetop. Those among us that have been there make comparisons with the Yangtze gorges, but all of us are nonetheless awed by the unfolding beauty of the scenery, made more so by the rarity of our passage here. As a reminder of times less serene, the captain of the Pandaw, U Chin Maung, explains that it was here in 1988 during insurgent uprisings that a sister ship to the Pandaw was sunk by Kachin rebels, hit by mortar-fire and her captain killed on his bridge. I am mindful that when we took her over, the Pandaw herself was fitted with heavy armour plating against such actions. These thoughts fresh in our minds we all jump when 3 explosions in close succession reverberate off these steep cliffs, but as a sign of the times, they are just a part of a nearby road-building project. Another elephant is spotted near to a village we pass, ears flapping dustily in the dusk. *** We are steaming north from Yandabo village as I glance up from my task. The water level has still been dropping rapidly and already the ship's lower decks are often hidden below the level of fields that we pass. As I look out I can barely see over the parapet of the sandbank, the lip close to me rushing past against the horizon and a great haze of heat roiling off the burning bright white sand. Through it I see the shining spire of a pagoda set amongst a relief of dark green trees. It's bell-like shape shimmers and waves in the distorted air. *** The river level has continued to fall and as the dusty shores grow ever drier, our attempts to find a suitable channel in to the western bank met with repeated failure. Time and again the hull would nudge an invisible submerged sandbar, and engines would roar to pull us off. Two crewmen sat at the prow of the ship, long stripy-painted bamboo poles in hand, testing the depths before us, and relaying their findings to the bridge. Time ticked by, and with fading light and no obvious way forward we admitted defeat, summoning a small country boat to ferry our passengers in to the shore, awaiting their return midstream. *** Crowds of people litter the muddy shores, plunging themselves in and out of the torpid waters between the assorted moored ships. The women in particular achieve a splendid feat, the exchange of the old, dirty and wet longyi for a clean dry one while maintaining complete modesty. It's a variation of the trick of trying to change out of your wet and sandy swimming costume as a small child, behind a towel on a beach full of people, but done with significantly more finesse. Soap suds bloom outwards on the surface of the river, as a week's washing is pounded on rocks, beaten with wooden batons until judged adequately clean. How they achieve such bright whites from such grimy waters is a mystery, and I don't imagine that the clothes last very long either. And as we pull away again and cast a view backwards, all along the sloping shores are a bright patchwork of drying garments, laid flat in the midday sun.
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With those evocative words, Rudyard Kipling first introduced the world to the "Road to Mandalay," Burma's Irrawaddy or, more recently, Ayerwaddy River, and the spell which she casts over all those who travel on her or live alongside her. For more than a century, she has retained her romance as both the playground of adventurers and a haven of spirituality, a slow-changing vista of peaceful canoes gliding past ancient temples, 
sinewy fishermen casting their nets like butterflies wings in the pink dawn, monks bathing in the mist and flaming sunsets, never to be forgotten.The Irrawaddy River is one of the great rivers of Asia, rivaling the Ganges of India or the Mekong of Vietnam. However, years of political exile mean that few people even know the name of the country through which it flows. Consequently, it is one of the least explored waterways in the modern world.
In the end, however, the river's vital role as a means of supply and transportation became the tool of destruction for the people who depended on it for their survival. In 1942, in an effort to thwart the invading Japanese forces and to deny them a springboard to imperial India, the flotillas of ships were willfully sunk by the British - scuttled in one fell blow at Katha after evacuating non-Burmese from Rangoon. With this the river entered a decline and, as Burma gained independence and entered half a century of self-imposed international isolation, so the name of the Irrawaddy slipped from public consciousness. 
My relationship with the Irrawaddy River began five years ago when I was offered a job managing a small tourist expedition cruising ship for a winter season. At the time, this was real groundbreaking stuff, visiting areas that had rarely encountered foreign visitors, at least not since pre-war times. Captivated by the people and places that I found there, I returned three years later for a longer posting and spent a further two winter seasons afloat.
The Irrawaddy is a river of great character, rising and falling with the monsoon rains, in places by as much as thirty feet. In the rainy season it is a raging torrent, a huge volume of water flowing down from the Himalayas towards the sea. By April, the end of the dry season, vast crumbling riverbanks have been exposed and the navigable channel follows a tortuous course between the sandbanks. In places, the river will fall as low as three to five feet. Pilots are brought aboard the larger vessels to assist with this nightmare of navigation, every foot of water being learnt anew each year and committed to hand-drawn charts as the channel shifts with the seasons. It is not uncommon to witness vessels hard aground, with their crews splashing waist deep around the stranded hulls.
As a nation, Burma is for the most part devoutly Buddhist, and this is reflected in the pagodas and temples that line the banks of this mighty waterway. In places where erosion has taken its toll, many of these beautiful religious monuments are on the verge of ruin. Where they remain, perched on precipices in the pale light and drifting mist of an Irrawaddy dawn, or the rich reds of a sunset, they evoke a sense of wonder and spiritualism.
live a cyclical life, marked by the rising and setting of the sun, and by the seasons. The river is the centre of their lives. People drink from it, grow produce from it, wash themselves and their clothes in it. Children laugh and splash in the muddy water. Swathes of bright cloth are draped on the banks to dry. It is a place and a way of life that reflects much simpler times, a place where peace and tranquility prevail.
The gentle pace of life on the Irrawaddy has allowed me to capture on film the beauty of the river and the richly colourful world of the people who live on it and around it. Over the course of two years, I have had the freedom to explore the Irrawaddy region and discover hidden places, and the photographs I have taken offer a unique perspective on a little known land. They portray a world that is very much as it was a hundred years ago. A river of timeless, almost mystical majesty.
In essence, the book will be a travelogue, similar in structure and style to the book, Bruce Chatwin - Photographs and Notebooks. It should be in landscape format, since most of the photographs are taken this way. The pictures will evoke life on the Irrawaddy in all its forms. In many ways, these photographs are historical records in their own right. They capture all facets of life on and around the river, from the graceful sweep of the dawn fishermen's nets to the rituals of the red-robed monks. There will also be a strong use of contrast - crumbling sandy riverbanks set against the deep hues of sunrises and sunsets, people and pagodas silhouetted against the ancient, temple-dotted landscape, flimsy wooden canoes with patchwork sails vying with crowded passenger ferries on the sparkling, coffee-coloured water. The whole premise of the book will be to convey the majesty of the Irrawaddy River and the simple, almost magical lives of the people who live alongside her.
This means that little or no development has occurred around the river and the world that exists there is truly a reflection of a bygone era - a world "little spoiled by the abominable spirit of our times," to quote CM Enriques in A Burmese Wonderland (1922). Although there are now some high-speed ferries in operation on the river, these are few and far between. There is very little in the way of traffic on the river. Occasional flatbed barges stacked high with teak are guided south by tugs, as are great rafts of bamboo and ceramic pots, which glide through the shallows. More common are small wooden fishing vessels with patchwork sails or hand built canoes from which the fishermen cast their nets.
recently remarked that "the view of Burma from the UK is like the view of Cuba from Miami - impassioned, but not necessarily 100% correct. The death of apartheid saw tourism to South Africa explode and it is not difficult to see Burma booming in the same way. At present, there are only three main tourist ship operators on the Irrawaddy and, of these, two have limited schedules. Compare this to a country like Egypt, which has over 500 tourist ships operating on the Nile, and it is not difficult to see what is so special about Burma and the Irrawaddy.