I love the Burman with the blind favouritism born of first impression. When I die I will be a Burman… and I will always walk about with a pretty almond-coloured girl who shall laugh and jest too, as a young maiden ought. She shall not pull a sari over her head when a man looks at her and glare suggestively from behind it, nor shall she tramp behind me when I walk: for these are the customs of India. She shall look all the world between the eyes, in honesty and good fellowship, and I will teach her not to defile her pretty mouth with chopped tobacco in a cabbage leaf, but to inhale good cigarettes of Egypt’s best brand.(Rudyard Kipling, Moulmein)

Monastère de Bagaya, Inwa, Birmanie, juillet 2016