3 Days With The Karen Tribespeople

It’s all too easy when travelling to be OTT about current experiences, but it’s hard not to use effusive phrases like “best ever” after our wonderful, educational and humbling few days with the Karen tribespeople in Northern Thailand. Experiences like this are what travelling really is about….

1: Welcome to Nongtao

After cities and islands, we head out in search of the “real” Thailand. Chiang Mai gives way to rice fields, the roads become narrower, villages become fewer and farther between. Straight roads become hairpins, the climbs get steeper, farmland becomes jungle. The dust roads lead us finally to Nongtao, a tiny village and a traditional home to Karen tribespeople, way up in the mountains.

Our home for the next few days is a small wooden shack, this is a “homestay”, an opportunity to live amongst the Karen people and learn just what mountain village life is. The setting is wonderfully remote, peaceful and rural, far away from the cities in every sense. We meet Soe, our hostess, and take our first stroll through Nongtao, there are only small traditional wooden houses here, all raised on stilts in readiness for the rainy season, cockerels, chickens and broods of tiny chicks everywhere, inquisitive dogs coming to greet. A guy tends the crop fields near our home; he introduces himself as Kaew. He has little English but large quantities of smile.

Karen people, the older ladies in traditional tribal dress, mostly greet us with a smile, some look down and avoid eye contact with these strange looking farangs. We venture off along one dusty track, but we don’t fancy taking on the crowd of water buffalo blocking our way so we divert and head off up a dusty mountain track, climbing high above Nongtao, wonderful views across jungle mountains. Here, we are more than 5,000 feet above sea level; Doi Inthanon, the highest point in all of Thailand, is visible nearby.

Before we start, a cooking pot in one hut smells divine, we are gestured in and enjoy lunch, despite a 100% language barrier. Not difficult to get over that hurdle when there’s only one pot cooking. Food is definitely less spicy here than down south, the idea being, it seems, that you regulate your own level by adding spices yourself.

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The sun goes down around 6pm, and the temperature immediately starts to drop. Soe asks us what we would like to do in Nongtao, we tell her we want to see elephants, but at an ethical place, not a tourist site which mistreats the animals; we tell her we want some jungle trekking. Ok, she says, elephants 10am tomorrow, trekking 9am next day. Sorted.

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Kaew turns up with some friends, some whiskey, and a guitar. They play for us, we sit and chat, Soe interpreting, they offer us whiskey. Rude not to. The bottled water they are swigging is offered to us too.

“Be careful”, they say, and grin. It isn’t bottled water at all, it’s a ferocious clear brandy. “Moonshine”, they say, “made from roots”. Welcome to Nongtao!

And all the while the temperature drops. It’s so cold by the time we go to bed, the mountain air so much colder than we anticipated. We use both of the quilts provided, and our rather brilliant “nod pods” come into their own, not for the first time. We are to learn later that tonight dips to 6 degrees, that’s a sweep of about 30 degrees in a matter of hours.

This is some introduction.

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