Book excerpt: Provides poignant descriptions of the efforts of simple ethnic tribes-people to forge lives amid the larger struggles of political antagonists, drug lords, foreign interlopers and assorted other opportunists; a situation that remains painfully relevant to many in diverse locations to the present day. Bertil and Hseng Noung Lintner, and their baby daughter, born en route, spent one and a half years travelling through northern and eastern Burma, from 1985-87. Throughout their account, they describe, with rare and deep insight, the struggle by northern Burma's ethnic