The Face of...

They say the most life-altering experience on the road is usually a happy one. However, this is not always so.

The Palaung Village in the Upper Northern Shan State of Myanmar definitely had a name. But despite my guide regaling me with anecdotes of his people as we (or rather, I) limped into town, the conversation - and all memories thereof - died on our lips when we saw him.

He had the high cheekbones of a Disney prince and tattered camouflage shorts. His bare chest exposed narrow shoulders, and the hairless torso of a boy who would have been no older than sixteen. But the AK-47 strapped across his back did a great deal to age him. He was a warrior from the paramilitary group that had waged war on a government that systematically denied their people representation. Simply put: a terrorist. He sized me up in silence.

My guide had not known that the village in which we were to break our fast was occupied by the anti-government freedom fighters only hours earlier. We had been incommunicado in the scrub. The village was 35 kilometres from where we had begun our adventure and there was another 35 to go. The village was beautiful; all dark wood buildings on stilts and the soft hush of quiet commerce around the taut breathing of patrolling freedom fighters along the main street.

My guide assured me that I was protected by virtue of my white skin, but his phrasing did not shake my unease. No local is exempt from the machinations of the conflicts between the weaponised tribes and the government. We agreed to eat our meals rapidly, and depart as soon as was possible. But such is the best-laid plans of those with good intentions: my feet had blistered beyond my capacity to walk, and boasted the very real threat of infection. To keep trawling the increasingly narrow path was a futile fantasy. Despite the situation in which we found ourselves, my guide apologetically conceded that I would be safer if we did not continue to move. Rather, I would be taken by motorbike back to the original town. With a local. Who spoke not a lick of English.

With appreciation to the predicament in which we were in, I complied. But as I rattled on the most frightening 3 hour bike road down narrow mountain roads back to town, I could not shake the face of the militant from my mind. I would never recommend such an experience to anyone, but there is no denying that it changed me forever. And so my most treasured travel experience is the face of war, etched in that of a teenage boy.