Our journey took shape in the small hours of one morning in January. Dom, our de facto leader, had spent a week staying up until dawn, obsessively scrolling through Google maps, firing coloured pins into lakes and rivers that could be potential destinations. One morning, he came across what he was looking for: a thirty-two-kilometre route down the Mone River, in Myanmar’s Magwe region, culminating in the Kyee Ohn Kyee Wa dam, which was built seven years ago to generate electricity for the country’s cities. Few tourists visit the dam, and fewer still, the river.

The trip took place in late April, the last days of the hot season. Myanmar was parched, dried out and desiccated, the whole country waiting for the monsoon to break. Our bus took us through the night, nine hours from Yangon, delivering us shaken but in one piece in Magwe, a city situated on the banks of the Irrawaddy, Myanmar’s largest river.

It was here that we met Leo and Aung, two cousins who had accompanied us on previous trips, and whose implacable, betel-chewing, beer-sipping ways were always a comforting presence.

• Tags: Issue 16, Myanmar, Tom Sanders