Senast uppdaterad: 2009-04-29
Itinerary
Day 1
Tours starts in Yangon.
Day 2-3
Bus to Bago or Pegu as it was called in the past. The city has a long history. Bago has been the capital of the country or part of the country during many periods. The last period was from 1740 to 1757. The old palace is being excavated now and they are rebuilding the old buildings. Not much of the old palace is visible today.
The natural centre of Bago is its great golden pagoda. At 114 meters it is the tallest in Burma, even bigger than the more famous Shwedagon in Rangoon. If you come in the afternoon you will be joined by hundreds of Burmese. As the pagoda is illuminated the crowds keep coming all through the night. There are many famous Buddhist sites in and around Bago. A reclining Buddha measuring 55 meters is one of the attractions. Bago is one of the main centres for Buddhism in the country and one of the largest monasteries in Burma is situated here. A visit to Kha Khat Monastery early in the morning is quite a sight. Watching the long line of monks and novices coming out of the monastery in the morning for their daily alms is spectacular. The market in Bago is very lively.
The night train for Mandalay departs at 15.00. We have made arrangements for reclining seats (more comfortable than sleeping car, funny as it may sound) and is quite comfortable. Meals are usually included in the ticket price.
Day 4-6
You arrive will to Mandalay 03.30 in the morning. Mandalay is the second biggest city in Burma with a population of more than one million people. It is regarded as the cultural centre of Burma and has got an abundance of things to do in and outside the city.
You will have three days to spend in and around Mandalay, the last of Burma before the British took over. Culturally the area around Mandalay is still the heart of Burma. 60% of the monks in the country live around here. The name comes from Mandalay Hill, which is rising 236 meters above the city and a climb in the late afternoon is a perfect start for a visit.
Other sights in the city include Mandalay Fort, which now is rebuilt. It is filled with history from the British take-over and the Second World War, when the Indians and English fought the Japanese here.
Naturally Mandalay also got its share of pagodas. Kuthodaw Paya with its 729 marble slabs on which the entire Tripitaka, a Buddhist canon, is inscribed. It is said to be the biggest book in the world. The Mahamuni Paya is the most famous of them all. The temple and pagodas themselves might not look much, but the activity makes up for that. Monks’ residences are nearby and all the shops are selling Buddhist figures, altars and music instruments.
Among other amusing things to do in Mandalay is visiting all the workshops, which are divided in a sort of guild system in the southern part of the city. Here you will find one place for bronze casting, woodcarving, tapestry, silk weaving, gold leaf makers, alabaster Buddha makers, stone carvers etc.
Another rewarding visit is going to the Institute of Theatre and Music. You can see the youngsters practice both dance and traditional instruments. It is probably possible to see a performance by professionals in the evening at the National Theatre. If you have any interest for theatre and dance you can also visit one of the marionette theatre performances or the Moustache Brothers pwe performance. One of the Moustache Brothers is a very outspoken gentleman.
Mandalay has also a huge market. The outdoor market has mainly food and vegetables for sale, but the indoor markets sell all sorts of things including some handicrafts. The jade market is also very interesting.You will have to buy your own bicycle in Mandalay which you will keep for 10-12 days. By means of bicycle you will manage to get really close to Burmese life in the countryside. As a group you will use bicycles only for three days to make the following route:
Mandalay to Sagaing - 20 kilometres
Sagaing to Mingun - 20 kilometers
Kyauk Myaung – Shwebo 29 kilometres
A new bicycle costs around 60-75 USD. You must chose a high bicycle to be able to stretch your legs. Basic Chinese bikes have proved to be more durable than Indian ones. You can sell your bicycle in Bagan for approximately half the price. Make your first rides inside the town and adjust the cycle before you are leaving for the longer tour. Your luggage will be transported separately. You will only need luggage for two days in a row.
If you want you can use the bicycle a lot in Mandalay, Shwebo, Monywa and Bagan.Day 7-8
You will begin your bicycle journey with the four ancient cities around Mandalay. In the afternoon of the first day you will take your bicycles to Sagaing, only 20 kilometres away from Mandalay. Halfway between Mandalay and Sagaing you will reach Amarapura. This town is probably best visited in the afternoon so you can stop by at the U-Bein Bridge at sunset for a magnificent view. It looks really handsome with all the monks coming in their robes over the bridge. The bridge is supposedly the longest teak bridge in the world. The surrounding lake with all the monasteries by the water is also very nice. From Amarapura it is another ten kilometres to Sagaing.
Stay two nights in Sagaing by the Ayeyarwady River. Sagaing must be one of the most charming cities in Burma. Most of the houses are simple wooden ones and there are thousands of pagodas plopping up in the forest, some of them old, but most of them are whitewashed newly built pagodas. From Sagaing Hill you have a very good view over the city and the Ava Bridge crossing the river. Sagaing was the capital during a brief period in the 14th century, quite soon after Bagan fell.
You can visit Inwa on the opposite side of Ava Bridge from Sagaing. Inwa became a capital for almost 400 years from 1364 to 1841, when the capital was moved to Amarapura. You might not be interested in old ruins and temples at all, but some of it might be fun anyway and plus, there is plenty of other things to discover during this trip. These places are not at all like a museum and you will find lots of regular farmers doing their everyday work in the midst of the many hundred year old pagodas.
Day 9
In the morning you cycle along Ayeyarwady River to Mingun. Mingun would have been home to the world’s biggest pagoda if King Bodawpaya would had got it his way. Thousands of slaves built the base before the king died. Originally it was supposed to be three times higher than the 50 meters they accomplished. The view from the top of the huge base is great. An earthquake in 1838 made a huge crack in the grand monument that just made it look more imposing. It is by far the most photographed building in the area. Coming from Sagaing to Mingun there’s a 20 kilometer bicycle ride on a rather sandy road. No cars here! You can stop at local small cheroot factories along the way. This stretch is the hardest of the biking tour. The distance is not far, but the road is in a bad condition, so you will need around three-four hours to accomplish this distance.
Day 10-11
Continue by boat for a few hours before reaching the pottery town of Kyauk Myaung, famous for its glazed pottery. Almost every household here is involved in ceramics and you can visit a workshop. From Kyaug Myaung you have a 29 kilometer ride to Shwebo on a nice road where traffic is scarce.
Shwebo is a bigger town with a population somewhere around 200.000. Even if Shwebo is an old capital too it doesn’t see so many visitors. There are not many foreigners making it up here and you can meet students from the private day schools here. Most likely you could help with teaching one evening and in this way get a lot of contacts. One school is very enthusiastic about receiving guests. Please remember that you cannot ask your tour leader to come with you to visit the school.
You will have a day in and around Shwebo. To go out to the surrounding countryside and villages where the locals have hardly met any foreigners is very nice. Some of the villages are supposed to have some traces from the old Portuguese who were sent into exile to the villages around Shwebo. No one speaks Portuguese and or follows any western traditions. You will get help to find an interpreter, and having split into smaller groups you will spend some time in the countryside around Shwebo this day. If you prefer to be in Shwebo you will find one of the nicest markets in Burma here and an altogether a city with lots of various Buddhist sites and …Buddhist charm.
In the evening you will take your bicycles on a bus and go to Monywa.
Day 12
You will have a full day in Monywa, which is another rather big city with 300.000 people. No city apart from Rangoon and Mandaly feels like big cities. There are not many cars and there are no high rising buildings.You have a few sites around Monywa. One is the colourful Thanboddhay Paya, 19 km away from Monya, with its 582.357 Buddha images (who counted them?). About 25 kilometers away from Monywa after you crossed Chindwin River by ferry you will find the Hpo Win Daung Caves. There are some interesting sandstone caves here. Not even in the caves can you escape Buddhism. Even here you will find Buddhist statues, murals and woodcarvings from the 17th and 18th centuries. The caves are part of the Pondaung Ponnya Mountain range, where the fossilised remains of Pondaung Man were found.
Day 13-15
You will go to Pakokku by boat to go down the Chindwin River until it joins the Ayeyarwady River. The boat ride to Bagan will take approximately 8 hours.
With some assistance you will sell your bike to locals or to a guesthouse just before leaving Bagan. It seems that ladies’ bicycles are more in demand and get a better price.
Bagan with its thousands of pagodas on the banks of the Ayeyarwady is the most famous sight in all of Burma. Experts usually refer to it as the only site of all the sites in South East Asia that can match Angkor Wat in size and beauty. At its peak in the 13th century there were supposed to be almost 4500 pagodas, but at the last count in 1978 “only” 2230 identifiable objects were found. Bagan entered its golden age in the middle of the 11th century and fell at 1287 when Kublai Khan´s Mongols conquered the city.
Unlike Angkor Wat where each and every building itself gives you an opportunity to discover detail after detail, in Bagan the big treat is rather the abundance of pagodas. Especially the sunrise and the sunset make the sandstone pagodas shine with a golden light and you can see that at its best from top of some of the bigger pagodas. Mingalazedi and Shwesandaw Paya are two of the better pagodas to watch the sunset from.
A lot of the pagodas are situated around Old Bagan, which used to be a village among all the pagodas. The magic of Bagan disappeared a bit when they tore down houses and made an asphalt road between the main pagodas. Still a lot of the pagodas are fabulous. Ananda Pahto is one of the most beautiful with all its glazed tiles showing jatakas (scenes from Buddha’s life). Shwegugyi with its nice stucco carvings in the inner wall and the 61 meter tall Thatbyinnyu Pahto are two more of the major pagodas in Old Bagan. The mural paintings in Gu-byauk-gyi, just beside your hotel in Myinkaba are beautiful.
If you want to find a spot where Bagan is not over-renovated yet, you should go to the eastern part of Bagan around Tayok-pyi Paya. Many people consider this place the nicest of all in Bagan. Not so many tourists come here and it is much more genuine.
They have also finished the big Bagan Museum, which is well worth a visit. The market in Nyaung-U can also give a nice change from the pagodas.
Day 16-18
By rented vehicle in the morning to Thazi by way of Mt.Popa - the holy abode of the nats. This originally animistic belief was once banned, but since people had such a strong belief in these nature spirits connected with hills, trees and lakes they are still worshipped. In Burma you quite frequently run into a sort of performances called Nat Pwe, where the mediums performing are always women (some transvestites too) who try to rid the novice, a house or a sick person from bad spirits. Loud music and trance dance are just part of these spectacular performances where the mediums are using dry fish, knives, bananas and plenty of alcohol to try to get in touch with the Gods. These performances often last from midday to late at night. These nat pwes you find at random apart from when there are special festivals.
Mt.Popa is most likely an old extinct volcano and a peculiar shaped mountain rising at 1.520 meters. Along the way to the top the figures portraying the main nats are supposed to be given offers to. From where you get off your vehicle there’s a steep climb for 30 minutes to reach the top of the mountain. After stopping by Mt.Popa you continue to the small town of Kalaw.
You can choose different alternatives for trekking between villages inhabited by Pa-O, Danu, Palaung, Shan and several other ethnic minorities belonging to several different language groups as Mon-Khmer,Tibeto-Burmese and Thai. You can do a longer trek, but if you plan to spend both nights in the same village, and consequently go for a shorter trek, it is possible too. The group will be split into smaller groups. You have interpreters coming along on the trek.
The area is hilly, but the trekking is easy. You will go between 11 and 18 km a day (4-6 hours a day). You will stay with families or possibly in monasteries. The atmosphere while staying with the families has generally been very good. You will have all your meals in the villages. The area where you trek was before a stronghold for various groups dealing with opium. Today this is almost extinct, and the villages all seem to be in good order. There are some Pa-O villages, where they still are dealing in poppy and the government let them do it as long as peace is maintained.
Day 19-21
In the afternoon you will take a bus to Nyaungshwe on the northern shore of Inle Lake. You have two days to spend at this beautiful lake situated at 1328 meters above sea level. The lake itself with the mountains as a backdrop is really picturesque, patched with floating vegetation and fishing canoes with tall oval shaped fishing nets. There are also 17 different villages on stilts in the lake. The villages are mainly inhabited by Intha people. You can rent a boat to go around the lake, making stops at some of the floating villages and perhaps visit some of the markets. The floating markets are rather conventional these days and hardly sell anything but souvenirs. Try one of the other markets on the shore instead! They take place at altering places with an interval of five days and are all visited by locals.
You can also do some shorter treks in the mountains surrounding the lake.
Day 22
Fly from Heho, an hour’s drive away from Nyaungshwe, to Rangoon in the morning. InRangoon you will stay in the centre of the city, which spreads out from the central pagoda, Pule Paya. There are lots of worn down colonial buildings in the centre of town, and some sections are mainly populated by either Indian or Chinese. There are both Hindu temples and mosques, Chinese temples and even a synagogue. You could try street food from all corners of Asia at small vendors downtown.Rangoon is a city of big lanes lining the boulevards, great big parks and a bustling centre. These days traffic is picking up very quickly and in future it will most likely resemble any other big South East Asian capital. There are roughly four million people in Rangoon.
The highlight of any visit to Rangoon and one of the biggest sights in all of Burma is the Shwedagon Pagoda. As in many other cities the main pagoda rises hundred meters above the rest of the city and makes it both a perfect landmark and a natural place to visit just to look out over the city. The religious activity around the pagoda is at its best from late afternoon to early evening when thousands of people come to gather merit by circumambulating around the pagoda. Some are just offering prayers to one of the many divinities around the pagoda. Apart from the main pagoda there are also hundreds of smaller pagodas from all the provinces in Burma.
Day 23
Tour ends.