How many days do you need in Myanmar?

So the honest answer runs the other way from most destinations. Instead of asking what you can fit in, we ask how few moves the trip can be built with, and then how much slack sits around each of them.

Before the lengths: Myanmar is available from us on request and subject to conditions on the ground. We assess each enquiry for your specific dates and route before we quote, and we decline regularly. The full position is on our complete Myanmar guide.

The short version

Seven days, and why we say no

Seven days is where most enquiries start and it is the one length we will argue with.

Here is the arithmetic. Getting to Myanmar almost always means a connection, usually through Bangkok, and the practical loss is a day at each end. That leaves five days on the ground. The standard route has four places in it and two internal flights. Each flight costs a morning or an afternoon plus the buffer we build around it. You would be looking at roughly three usable sightseeing days across four towns, in a country where the temperature makes the middle of the day unusable for half the year.

You would also be spending the same money on international flights that a fourteen day trip spends, and about the same on the internal flights, which is why seven days prices badly as well as travelling badly. See what a trip to Myanmar costs.

There is one version we would build, and it is not really a Myanmar trip. If you are already in Thailand and can add four or five nights, we would do Yangon and Bagan only, with one flight, and no attempt at Inle or Mandalay. That is a genuine short trip with a defensible shape. What we will not do is compress the four-place route into seven days and hand you an itinerary that only works if nothing goes wrong.

Nine to ten days, the standard first trip

This is the shape we build most often and it is the right first answer for most people.

• Yangon, two nights. Shwedagon in the last hour of daylight, the downtown colonial grid, the circular railway, the markets and the street food.
• Bagan, three nights. Two full days among the temples and one that is not spoken for.
• Mandalay, two nights. The city itself is a working town rather than a beautiful one. What justifies it is Amarapura and the U Bein teak bridge, the monastery hills across the river when access allows, and the Mahamuni face-washing ceremony at four in the morning.
• Inle Lake, two or three nights. A boat day, Indein’s stupa field, the rotating markets, and the calmest place on the route.

Two internal flights, one road or river leg, and one day that exists purely as buffer. That buffer day is the difference between a cancelled flight being an inconvenience and a cancelled flight being the end of the itinerary. We do not remove it to save a day, and we do not put a domestic flight and an international flight on the same date.

See classic Myanmar in 10 days.

Twelve days, where the trip starts to breathe

Twelve days is ten days with one real addition rather than two rushed ones. There are two versions and they are quite different trips.

The walking version. Two or three days on foot from Kalaw down to Inle Lake, through Danu, Pa-O and Palaung farming country, about 30 miles (50 km) over two days, sleeping in a village house or a monastery hall. It is not hard walking and it is, in our opinion, the best single thing we can put into a Myanmar itinerary. It also replaces a transfer with something you will remember. See the Kalaw to Inle trek and Kalaw to Inle on foot, 12 days.

The river version. The day boat down the Irrawaddy from Bagan to Mandalay, which replaces a four to five hour drive with one of the better days in the country. We only put a river leg into a route when we have confirmed the specific departure rather than the general existence of the service, and in twelve days there is room to rebuild it into a road day if it falls through.

Fourteen days, our recommendation

If you have come this far, fourteen is the number we would push you towards.

It buys three things. First, the standard route with three nights everywhere instead of two, which changes Bagan and Inle in particular. Second, one significant addition: Mount Popa and Salay from Bagan, or Monywa and the cave temples, or the run south from Yangon to Bago and the Golden Rock at Kyaiktiyo. Which of those we build depends entirely on what our partners confirm is reachable at the time, and we will name the alternative in the proposal in case the first choice is not.

Third, and least glamorous, it buys slack. Two buffer days rather than one, spread so that a cancelled flight in the middle of the trip does not push the whole thing forward. On a destination where the transport network is what it currently is, that is not padding.

The route is argued properly in the best two-week route through Myanmar and published as Myanmar in 14 days.

Twenty-one days, the slow version

Three weeks is not three weeks of new places. The workable part of the country is not large enough for that, and we are not going to invent regions we do not go to in order to fill it.

What three weeks is, is the same corridor at a pace where you stop counting. Four or five nights in Bagan and going out at six every morning until you know which temples are yours. A week that includes the walk from Kalaw and then three nights on the lake afterwards. The towns most itineraries drive past: Salay with its wooden monastery, Pyay, Monywa, the villages along the river. Time in Yangon to walk the downtown grid properly rather than tick Shwedagon.

It also means fewer internal flights per day travelled, which is the single best thing you can do for the reliability of a Myanmar itinerary. See Myanmar in 21 days.

What changes the answer

Where you are coming from. Most routes connect through Bangkok. If Thailand is already in the trip, the effective Myanmar length is longer because the long-haul days are absorbed elsewhere. Thailand is also the natural fallback if a Myanmar leg has to be dropped at short notice, which is a real planning consideration rather than a theoretical one. See our Thailand trips.

The season. In April, half of each day is unusable and a ten day trip does the work of eight. In November, ten days is ten days.

Whether you are walking. Adding the Kalaw walk without adding days is the most common mistake in this itinerary. It needs the two or three days it needs.

Conditions. If part of a route cannot be run for your dates, the trip gets shorter or it gets rebuilt. We would rather shorten than substitute something weak.

Related

• Myanmar: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Myanmar
• What a trip to Myanmar costs
• Myanmar for the first time
• All our Myanmar trips

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