Myanmar's northernmost town in the Himalayan foothills — Rawang villages, Hkakabo Razi base camp, and jade mines at the edge of the known world
Putao is the northernmost substantial settlement in Myanmar, at 435m in Kachin State's Himalayan foothills near the borders with India and China, accessible only by small aircraft for much of the year when roads are cut off by monsoon floods. The surrounding landscape shifts from subtropical forest to alpine meadow within 50km — the Hkakabo Razi at 5,881m is Southeast Asia's highest peak, and the upper Malikha River valley leading to it passes through territory inhabited by Rawang, Lisu, and Tibetan-influenced communities largely unchanged by modernity. The jade and amber mines of the Kachin…
Putao (formerly Fort Hertz) was established by the British as the most remote military outpost in the empire — garrisoned after 1914 primarily to monitor the India-China-Burma tripoint border and to prevent incursions from Tibet. The fort was one of the last positions in Burma to fall to the Japanese advance in 1942 and the first to be resupplied by air. After Burmese independence (1948) the town remained a restricted zone due to its proximity to the Chinese and Indian borders. The Hkakabo Razi massif was not surveyed until the 1990s; the first confirmed ascent was by a Japanese expedition in…