Check out our Gokteik Viaduct video.

The Gokteik viaduct

Train crossing the Gokteik viaduct, Shan State, Myanmar.

Pyin Oo Lwin (originally Maymyo) was the summer capital of the British in Burma and they built the railway to link it to Lashio in the north crossing the Gokteik gorge.

The Gokteik viaduct is the highest bridge in Burma (Myanmar) and when completed in 1901 was the largest railway trestle and the second highest railway bridge in the world.

The Japanese occupied Burma in 1942 and the Americans bombed railroads and bridges, including the Gokteik. It was repaired after the war and is still standing (in spite of a lack of maintenance reported in some guide books).

Burmese trains are narrow gauge and very old. However, they are still running so in November 2012 we took one from Pyin Oo Lwin to Naung Peng in northern Myanmar.

Train 131Up

At Pyin Oo Lwin station it was a trifle alarming watching railway workers levelling the tracks just before the train was due to arrive.

Myn, our guide, queued up for the tickets. US$3 for upper class or just $2 for ordinary class. For a four hour journey on a bumpy train we decided on an upper class carriage although that’s not as grand as it sounds – it was well past its use-by date.

The seats were wide but they no longer reclined and the seat padding must have seen many thousand backsides!

We were told that only foreigners can buy upper class tickets, at least on this stretch of the line, but some railwaymen, a soldier and a policeman shared our carriage at various times.

The policeman was particularly alarming as he was in full uniform with a helmet that he wore the whole time, and a webbing belt with a vicious looking knife attached. He carried what looked like a semi-automatic rifle (possibly an AK47).

He sat just opposite us and it rather cramped my style when it came to shooting video. I was careful to not aim the camera anywhere near him. Actually he looked like a pleasant young man but you don’t take chances with people carrying large guns!

On the way to Gokteik

The train started a mere ten minutes late, just after 8.30am.

The scenery was mostly pastoral; sugar cane, rice, corn and all manner of green plants.

We saw women in coolie hats weeding, harvesting and possibly planting too. Men with oxen ploughed the fields. Bright yellow African daisies lined the track.

The rolling hills matched the rolling train! It swayed, rocked and every now and again jumped and came down with a mighty bang. Those padded seats were well worth the extra dollar.

We stopped frequently, sometimes at wayside halts, others at stations with real platforms and vendors selling fruit, water, fried rice or fried noodles.

We bought plastic bags of noodles with two short bamboo chopsticks for 200Ky each. Very tasty.

The viaduct

After about three hours, as we got closer to Gokteik we began to catch sight of the viaduct, a mighty metal structure crossing a deep, wooded valley.

The track zigzagged down the hill several times so the view of the viaduct was first on one side of the carriage and then the other. We tourists followed suit. Myn was very good at letting us all know when to change sides.

Gokteik is a small station just before the viaduct but the view from there wasn’t great and the train didn’t stop for long.

And then we were on it.

It’s over 100 metres above the ground and nearly 700 metres long.

The viaduct is single track and has nothing in the way of a guard rail.

We hadn’t been travelling very fast before but now it was real snail’s pace. The train creaked and swayed gently (I don’t think the viaduct did but could be a different matter in a high wind). The gorge was thickly wooded all the way. Half way across we went over a fast-flowing river with rocks and rapids.

Absolutely stunning.

The spare bridge

The spare bridge over the Gokteik gorge, Shan State, Myanmar.

On the way across we caught sight of the lower Gokteik bridge.

This was built as a ‘spare’ bridge in 1976 – 1978 to keep trains running even if the viaduct was sabotaged by the Shan State Army in its fight for independence. The tracks were still visible from the viaduct when we were there in 2012, but the line has been left to the tropical vegetation since 2002.

Government forces and Shan rebels still clash from time to time but the bridge area is guarded by the Burmese military (and possibly mined).

End of the journey

Once over the viaduct the train passed through a couple of short tunnels and half an hour later we reached the next station, Naung Peng where we got off. The train continues to Hsipaw and Lashio but our driver, Saw, was waiting for us and we drove the rest of the way to Hsipaw.