Page 339 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

Katha NortherN MyaNMar 337
Katha

For travellers, KATHA would have been just another quaint riverside town of teak
houses, monks and mud – had one Eric Blair (later known as George Orwell; see box
below) not served his last posting as a colonial policeman here in 1926–27. Orwell
used the town as the setting for his novel Burmese Days, and though it was renamed
“Kyauktada” and the layout was disguised (Orwell’s publisher was concerned about
libel), several of the colonial buildings that played a part either in the novel or in
Orwell’s life are identifiable today.
Katha lies on the western bank of the Ayeyarwady River. Riverside Road (also known
as Strand Road) is lined with dark teak houses, the town’s cheapest accommodation
and several pagodas – the largest of which stands at its southern end, near the
menacing British-built jail that is still in use. The town is usually liveliest around the
busy market (daily 6.30am–4pm), a few blocks in from the river.

Orwell-era buildings
The most interesting Orwell-era buildings are north of the town centre on Club Street,
although they are neither signposted as such nor formally open to visitors – do bear
this in mind before you invite yourself in for a look around. The easiest to find is the
1924 tennis club, with its tiny mint-green clubhouse. Just behind the tennis court is
the half-timbered former British Club, still much as Orwell described it – “a dumpy 8
one-storey building with a tin roof” – now housing a local co-operative. It’s usually
locked, but the caretaker may unlock the door and produce the visitors’ book for you.
One block north of the tennis club, on the other side of the street, the District
Commissioners’ House stands alone in a huge lot. It’s being renovated by the Katha
Heritage Trust, founded in 2012 by local artist Nyo Ko Naing (Enyokonaing@gmail
.com), who hopes to open it as a George Orwell Museum. Orwell’s own house, the
Deputy Superintendent’s house in the novel, stands just off the main road, halfway
between the market and Hotel Katha. Admire it from the street – it’s now the residence
of the Chief of Police.
arrIVaL aND DePartUre Katha
By train Katha lies 20km from the station at Naba, people bound for Katha continue their journeys using
which is on the Mandalay–Myitkyina line. Although the pick-up trucks (1hr; K1000) that wait in the station
there is a line from Naba to Katha, there is only one train yard to meet each train. Ignore touts, who may approach
a day and the journey is very slow (3hr); instead, most you inside the station. Returning to Naba, pick-ups leave

GEORGE ORWELL IN BURMA
Eric Blair (1903–50), who would later find fame under the nom de plume George Orwell,
arrived in Burma in November 1922 as a youthful officer of the Indian Imperial Police. Sent to
Mandalay for training and then to Pyin Oo Lwin, he also spent time in the ayeyarwady Delta
and Mawlamyine, where his mother had grown up, before being posted to Katha.
Orwell’s experiences in Burma convinced him of the wrongs of imperialism, and he acquired
tattoos and a reputation as an outsider more interested in spending time with the Burmese
than in more “pukka” (appropriate) pursuits. In this he resembled John Flory, the protagonist
of his first novel Burmese Days (1934), which was set in a thinly disguised Katha. Orwell also
wrote about Burma in his essays A Hanging (1931) and Shooting an Elephant (1936).
there’s a long-standing joke that Orwell actually wrote three books about Burma, including
his denunciations of totalitarianism in Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949);
unlike the anti-imperialist Burmese Days, both of these later works were banned by the
authorities until recently.

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