Kachin State, Myanmar — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Kachin State known for?

Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao are the other towns the state is known by, and together they make up most of what a traveller in Kachin State will find named on a map. Borders do the rest of the work: China to the north and east, Shan State to the south, and Sagaing Region and India to the west. The state dates from 1948.

Where is Kachin State?

Two countries and two Myanmar units frame Kachin State. China takes the whole northern and eastern boundary, Shan State runs along the south, and Sagaing Region and India share the west between them, so foreign ground lies on more than one side of the state. It is the northernmost state in the country.

The state itself dates from 1948. That position puts Myitkyina, Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao at the far end of everything else, with the rest of Myanmar reached only back through Shan State or Sagaing Region. The state covers a great deal of ground.

Four towns carry names in the record, Myitkyina as capital, then Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao, and across an area that size the distance between one and the next is the governing fact of any journey here. Kachin State is one of the largest units on Myanmar's map, and its size is what separates Myitkyina from the borders on every side. China lies close on two sides.

Anyone in the north or east of Kachin State stands nearer China than the interior of Myanmar, and anyone on the western side is nearer India and Sagaing Region. Shan State closes the southern end.

What is Kachin State like?

The state's own name is written ကချင်ပြည်နယ်. That written form sits alongside Kachin State, the name used in English, and both name the same unit of Myanmar, established in 1948 with Myitkyina as its capital. Myanmar's map divides into states and regions.

Kachin State belongs to the first kind, and its immediate neighbours show both: Shan State to the south is another state, while Sagaing Region to the west is a region, and beyond them lie China and India rather than any further part of the country. English carries a visitor through. Four towns hold whatever a traveller finds in the way of services, Myitkyina first, then Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao, and between them stretches a state whose sides are shared with two foreign countries.

Distance is the shared condition of all four towns. The border with China runs north and east; the one with India runs west, alongside Sagaing Region. Two frontiers, one state.

That is the setting for everything here: a place of four named towns, established in 1948, with two of its sides given over to China alone and a third shared with India.

What is the history of Kachin State?

Kachin State dates from 1948. That year gave the northernmost state in the country its formal existence, with Myitkyina named as capital and Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao among the towns inside the new boundary. The borders were foreign from the start.

China lay to the north and east, India to the west beyond Sagaing Region, and Shan State to the south, which is the arrangement Kachin State has carried since.

What is the climate of Kachin State?

Nowhere in Kachin State meets the sea. Every side of it is land, China to the north and east, Shan State to the south, Sagaing Region and India to the west, so nothing here is tempered by an ocean. The northernmost position in the country matters more than anything else here, since the ground sits further from the equator than any other part of Myanmar's map.

Putao and Myitkyina share that northern setting.

How do you get to Kachin State?

Everything comes through Myitkyina. The capital is the point the rest of Kachin State works through, and Bhamo, Mohnyin and Putao are the other towns a route here can be built around. From inside Myanmar the approach is from the south, through Shan State, or from the west across Sagaing Region, since those two are the only Myanmar neighbours the state has.

China and India close the rest.