In October 1985, the Swedish writer Bertil Lintner, then thirty-two, crossed illegally from Indian Nagaland into Burma. A year-and-a-half later, he emerged in Xishuangbanna in Yunnan, China. He’d trekked with his wife, Hseng Noung Lintner, and infant daughter along 2,000 kilometres of Burmese jungle paths, crossing the Chindwin, Mali Hka, and Salween rivers. The aim of the journey was to report on little-known insurgency campaigns waged by groups like the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Communist Party of Burma (CPB).

This was journalism undertaken by a writer prepared to immerse himself fully in order to tell an important story. The risks were real: on occasion, the family found themselves caught in the middle of active combat. Lintner’s reporting from the trail appeared in the Far Eastern Economic Review, a weekly news magazine. Published in English in 1990, the book Land of Jade: A Journey from India through Northern Burma to China—part travel diary, part eyewitness account—told the story of Burma’s ethnic conflicts through Lintner’s writing and Hseng Noung’s photographs.

The book contains plenty of drama as the Lintners survive close calls with the Burmese army and battle serious disease. In the main, however, it is about the people of northern Burma. The family encounters a motley crew of characters: rebels, farmers, missionaries, and drug smugglers. Lintner’s empathy and curiosity lead the way as he forms a close rapport with his interlocutors. As they come alive on the page, the reader is transported to the misty hills of the “land of jade”.

• Tags: Bertil Lintner, Kristian Odebjer, Myanmar