The best two-week route through Myanmar

The corridor is Yangon in the south, Bagan and Mandalay in the central dry belt, Inle Lake up in the Shan hills, and the towns between them. That is the shape of every good Myanmar itinerary. What changes is the pace and what you put in the gaps.

Two things before the route. Myanmar is available from us on request and subject to conditions on the ground, we assess every enquiry for the specific dates and route before quoting, and we decline regularly. And several regions are not available to us at all. Both are set out in our complete Myanmar guide.

The route we argue for

Four bases. Two internal flights. One river day that replaces a drive. One day at the end that has nothing in it.

Days 1 to 3, Yangon

Most people give Yangon one night and regret it, or give it none and regret that more. It is the most interesting city in the country to walk in and the only one where the walking is the point.

The downtown grid holds the largest surviving collection of colonial-era commercial architecture in Southeast Asia, in every state from restored to collapsing, and it is a working neighbourhood rather than a preserved one. Below it is the Indian quarter, which is the best eating in Myanmar. The circular railway is worth an hour or two, less for what you see than for who is on it.

And there is Shwedagon, the most impressive religious building in Southeast Asia, best in the last hour of daylight and the first hour after dark, when the platform fills with people who have come to sit rather than to look. Give it two and a half hours and go on your first evening, not your last.

Days 4 to 6, Bagan

Fly. The road is long and there is nothing on it worth the day.

Three nights gives you two full days plus a morning, and the reason we insist on three rather than two is that Bagan rewards repetition. The first day is the famous temples and the shape of the plain. The second is the small brick ones down sandy tracks with a caretaker and a padlock, which is where the trip happens. The third morning is the one where you go back to the one you liked.

Out at six, back by eleven, out again at four. In the middle of the day you are at the hotel. This is not laziness, it is the only way the schedule works from February onwards.

The temples worth the time, what the rules on sunrise viewing actually are now, e-bikes, the lacquerware workshops and the balloon question are all in Bagan in three days.

Day 7, the river

The day boat down the Irrawaddy from Bagan to Mandalay is one of the better days in the country. Eight or nine hours on a wide brown river, sandbanks, villages, pagodas on bluffs, fishermen, and nothing to do. It replaces a four to five hour drive over about 110 miles (180 km) with something worth having.

The honest caveat: boats on this stretch run at reduced frequency and we only put a river leg into a route when we have confirmed the specific departure rather than the general existence of the service. If it is not running for your dates we drive, and we will tell you that before you book rather than after. Longer multi-night cruises on the Irrawaddy have been intermittent and we do not sell them as available by default.

Days 8 and 9, Mandalay and the old capitals

Mandalay itself is a working city rather than a beautiful one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is quoting Kipling, who never went.

What justifies two nights is what surrounds it. Amarapura and the U Bein teak bridge, three quarters of a mile (1.2 km) of teak posts across a shallow lake, a genuinely good hour at dawn and a crowded one at dusk. Inwa, reached by a short ferry, wandered by horse cart. The monastery hills across the river, when our partners confirm the road on the day: Sagaing Region as a whole is on our excluded list, and the hill immediately opposite Mandalay is the one part of it we sometimes still visit, only on confirmation.

And the Mahamuni Buddha at four in the morning, when the face of the image is washed in front of a hall of people who got up to be there. It is the most affecting thing in the city.

Days 10 to 12, Inle Lake

Fly Mandalay to Heho, then about an hour down through the hills to the lake. Three nights.

Day one is the lake by long boat: the stilt villages, the floating gardens grown on rafts of weed, the fishermen who row standing on one leg with the oar wrapped around it, the workshops, and Indein on the western shore, where a few hundred crumbling stupas stand in the scrub above a long covered stairway. Day two is the market, which rotates around the lakeshore villages on a five-day cycle, so which one you get depends on your dates. Day three is slower: the canal south, a monastery, a walk.

Inle is the calmest place on the route and the one people are most reluctant to leave, which is the argument for three nights rather than two.

Day 13, the buffer

Fly back to Yangon and have a day with nothing in it.

This day is not for sightseeing. It exists so that a cancelled flight earlier in the trip has somewhere to go. Domestic flights in Myanmar change at short notice and cancellations happen, and a fourteen-day route with no slack is a ten-day route wearing a longer coat. If everything has gone to plan, you spend it in a tea shop and at the Bogyoke market, and that is a good day.

We also never put a domestic flight and an international flight on the same date, which is what this day protects.

This route is published as Myanmar in 14 days.

The alternatives, and when we would build them

Swap the river day for Mount Popa and Salay. From Bagan, an extinct volcano with a monastery on a rock plug and a shrine to the thirty-seven nats, the pre-Buddhist spirits, plus Salay’s wooden monastery on the way back. Both are available at some times and not others and we confirm before we commit.

Swap two Inle days for the walk from Kalaw. Two or three days on foot through Danu, Pa-O and Palaung villages, about 30 miles (50 km) over two days, sleeping in a village house or a monastery, arriving at the lake by boat. The best single thing we can put in a Myanmar itinerary, and a different trip. It needs the days it needs. See the Kalaw to Inle trek and Kalaw to Inle on foot, 12 days.

Add the south instead of the river. From Yangon, Bago and then Kyaiktiyo, the Golden Rock, a gilded boulder balanced on a cliff edge in Mon State, reached by an open truck up a mountain and best in the evening when the pilgrims settle in for the night. It needs a night up there and it is not a day trip. Access has been intermittent.

Cut Mandalay entirely. A legitimate two-week route is Yangon three nights, Bagan four, Inle four, with a buffer and no Mandalay. If a working city with three good excursions around it does not appeal, this beats forcing it in.

Take the same corridor over three weeks. Same places, no compression, plus the towns everyone drives past: Salay, Monywa, Pyay, the river villages. Fewer flights per day travelled, which makes it the most reliable version of a Myanmar trip as well as the most relaxed. See Myanmar in 21 days.

Where we do not go

This is the part of the route planning that matters most and it is short.

We do not route through Rakhine State, Chin State, Kachin State, the northern and eastern parts of Shan State, Sagaing Region, Kayah State, Kayin State or parts of Magway Region. That means Mrauk U, which was one of the finest things in the country, is not reachable. It means Ngapali beach has been intermittently cut off and we do not treat it as available. It means the northern Shan hill towns and the trekking country beyond Hsipaw are not on our map at present, and neither is the old Gokteik viaduct railway.

If you ask for one of those places the answer will be no, and it will be no regardless of how the request is framed or what someone else has offered. That list changes in both directions, and we check it against the dates you are asking about rather than the date this page was written.

Related

• Myanmar: the complete guide to planning your trip
• Myanmar in 14 days
• Bagan in three days
• What we would skip in Myanmar
• All our Myanmar trips

Frequently asked questions