There is a shortage of certain food items in Kachin State because a bypass route on the Mandalay to Myitkyina road that circumvented a junta blockade has become impassable for trucks.
Junta soldiers and members of the junta-aligned Pyu Saw Htee militia erected a blockade of the main road between Mandalay Region’s Mandalay City and Myitkyina City, the capital of Kachin State to stop goods reaching Myitkyina and Kachin State.
They have blockaded the road near to the villages of Zeekone, Sabainantthar, and Paygyi in Kanbalu Township, Sagaing Region since early March 2025. As a result vehicles using the road, including cargo trucks, passenger vehicles, and buses were forced to use an alternative route known as the 40 Mile Road, which was controlled by resistance forces rather than the junta. Unfortunately, it has now sustained significant damage.
As its name suggests, the 40 Mile Road is an approximately 40-mile (64 km) unpaved dirt road that frequently suffers severe damage during the rainy season. Previously, during the rainy season, it would take a truck using the 40 Mile Road detour about seven days to travel from Mandalay to Myitkyina.
But, since 9 June 2025 it has been impassable to cars and any larger vehicles such as trucks. This has left trucks heading to Kachin State stranded in Kanbalu Town since then.
A resident of Myitkyina City said: “Right now, the bypass is so badly damaged that cars just can’t get through. That means food items like fish, which usually come up from the south, aren’t reaching Kachin State. Even tomatoes are starting to become scarce, and food prices are beginning to rise. No one really knows when the road will be back to normal.”
Because food cargo trucks are no longer arriving in Myitkyina there are shortages of raw meat, fish, and tomatoes. But it is not just Myitkyina City that has been affected. Goods destined for all other areas of Kachin State are also transported along the Mandalay to Myitkyina Road.
In Putao, a major Kachin Sate town to the north of Myitkyina, that also acts as a transport hub for goods going to other areas of northern Kachin State, the prices of eggs, chicken fish, tomatoes, and garlic, which normally come via Myitkyina, are skyrocketing.
A vendor from a wet market in Putao Town said: “Food hasn’t been arriving here for about a week now. There’s a shortage of eggs and chicken, and the only fish you can find in the markets is the kind caught locally. The fish that usually comes from the lower regions, imported from Mandalay, is completely out of stock.”
There had already been a shortage of goods and raised prices in Kachin State because the junta had blockaded the road from Mandalay to Myitkyina as it passed through Indaw Town in August 2024. On 7 April 2025 people’s defence forces (PDFs) and allied groups captured Indaw Town and re-opened the road but unfortunately, by then the current junta blockade had already started.
That blockade also forced vehicles to use alternative routes causing raised prices and shortages of goods in Kachin State, similar to the current situation.
