You land at Yangon and your guide takes you into town, forty-five minutes or so. The rest of the day is free. The first thing most people notice is that foreign cards do not work here and that the internet is slow and patchy. Your leader hands out the week’s plan over a drink before dinner and explains how cash works, which is worth ten minutes of your attention.

Mostly on foot. The colonial grid downtown runs from the Strand up to Sule Pagoda, which took minor cracking in the 2025 earthquake and remains open while inspections continue. We look into Bogyoke Aung San market, built in 1926 and still trading in jade, gems and longyi, and finish at Shwedagon in the last hour of light. Dinner together in a tea house of the kind Yangon does best.

The morning flight to Nyaung U takes about eighty minutes. Bagan opens out as a dry plain of brick — over two thousand surviving temples and stupas raised between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, when this was the seat of the first Burmese kingdom. We start with Shwezigon, gilded and busy with pilgrims, whose smaller outer stupas collapsed in March 2025, then Htilominlo. Sunset from a viewing mound.

By car and on foot, with a long break through the middle of the day when the plain is at its hottest. Ananda, the best preserved of the great temples, with four standing Buddhas set at right angles; Dhammayangyi, unfinished, enormous and never satisfactorily explained; Sulamani for the murals. In the afternoon a lacquerware workshop in New Bagan, where a bowl passes through a dozen coats over several months.

We fly to Heho. Depending on the day this runs direct or routes through Mandalay, and the connection sets our departure time — your leader confirms it the evening before. From Heho it is an hour by road down to Nyaungshwe at the head of the lake. We take the first boat out in the late afternoon, when the light is low and the fishermen are working the shallows.

Up the shallow creek to Indein and its hillside of small ruined stupas, a few restored, most left as they fell. Then Phaung Daw Oo, the lake’s main shrine; a silk and lotus-fibre weaving workshop at In Phaw Khone; and the floating gardens, rafts of matted weed staked with bamboo where the Intha grow tomatoes. Several floating buildings are still under repair after the earthquake. Farewell dinner in Nyaungshwe.

Back up to Heho and a flight to Yangon in time for onward connections. Domestic schedules here move without much notice, so we keep the last day loose and hold a Yangon day room when the international departure is late in the evening. If you have longer, Mandalay adds two worthwhile days to this trip and we can build it in before you book.