Dawn on the Mekong

We left the guesthouse at half past four, which in March is well before anything resembling light. The boatman was already awake. He had a thermos of tea and no interest at all in my opinion about the schedule.

The Mekong at Kratie is wide enough that the far bank is a rumour until the sun is up. Photographs people take at eleven in the morning do not tell you what it is like at five. At dawn the water is not blue or green — it is grey and flat, and it holds the mist on top of it like a lid.

We went upriver for about forty minutes. Nobody spoke. The only sound was the pole going in, and coming out, and going in again.

Then the sun cleared the trees on the far bank and everything changed in the space of maybe ninety seconds. The mist lifted off the surface. The water went from grey to brass. The far bank, which had been a suggestion, became a line of palms and stilted houses.

The picture at the top of this page is from that moment. I have photographed this river a lot since and none of it has the same quality. I think that is because on that morning I was not trying to make a photograph of a river. I was standing in a boat, cold, with my hands not working properly, watching the day start.

If you go: boats leave from Kratie around 5:30 for the Irrawaddy dolphins at Kampi. Bring something warm — the river at dawn is colder than the town. And do not expect to take a better picture than the one you already have in your head; you will probably take one anyway.