Your guide meets you at Yangon and it is about forty-five minutes into the centre, longer in the afternoon. Nothing is scheduled. Before dinner your leader sits down with the group to go through what this trip is and is not: four places, all reached by air, no overland legs between cities, and a country where power cuts, cash-only payment and slow internet are simply normal.

The downtown grid the British laid out in the 1850s still stands — block after block of decaying colonial offices around the Secretariat, where Aung San and six colleagues were assassinated in July 1947. We ride a section of the circular line, then look into Bogyoke Aung San market, trading since 1926. Late afternoon at Shwedagon, ninety-nine metres of gilded brick, once the marble platform has cooled enough to walk barefoot. Dinner together.

A morning flight to Nyaung U, about eighty minutes. Bagan is dry, flat and covered in brick: more than two thousand temples and stupas survive across some forty square kilometres, raised between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. We begin with Ananda, whose four standing Buddhas face the cardinal points, then Thatbyinnyu, the tallest of them. Sunset from a viewing mound built for the purpose after the temples were closed to climbers.

A full day with a long break through the worst of the heat. Dhammayangyi, the bulkiest temple on the plain, has brickwork so tight that a needle will not pass between courses; Sulamani holds the better murals. In the afternoon a lacquerware workshop in New Bagan, where a single bowl takes months and a dozen coats. The March 2025 earthquake cracked stupas across the zone and repairs continue, so expect scaffolding and a few closed interiors.

A short flight to Mandalay, half an hour in the air. Mahamuni first, where the Buddha image has been gilded so thickly by pilgrims that its outline has changed shape; then the marble-carving street behind it, still working, still white with dust. Late afternoon at Amarapura for U Bein bridge, 1.2 kilometres of teak across Taungthaman lake, closed for inspection after the earthquake and reopened in sections since.

Across the water to Inwa, capital on and off for four centuries, reached by ferry and toured by pony cart on dirt lanes: Bagaya monastery on its teak posts, the leaning watchtower, the Maha Aungmye Bonzan. Back in Mandalay for Kuthodaw, whose 729 marble slabs carry the Pali canon and several of which cracked in 2025, and Shwenandaw, the one teak building of the royal palace to survive the war. Dinner together.

Forty minutes in the air to Heho, then an hour by road down to Nyaungshwe at the head of the lake. We take a long boat out in the late afternoon: leg-rowing fishermen, floating tomato gardens grown on anchored rafts of weed and silt, and stilt villages where every errand is done by boat. Some floating buildings came down in the earthquake and are still being rebuilt.

Up a shallow creek to Indein, where several hundred small stupas stand in every state of collapse on a hillside, some restored, most left as they fell. Then Phaung Daw Oo, the lake’s principal shrine, whose five images are gilded past recognition. In the afternoon In Phaw Khone, where women weave silk and lotus fibre on wooden looms, and a yard where teak hulls are still built by hand. Farewell dinner in Nyaungshwe.

Back up to Heho by road and a flight to Yangon, connecting to your international departure. Nothing about travel here is quite routine: domestic schedules change at short notice, so we build a buffer into the last day and hold a Yangon day room when the timings are awkward. Your leader stays with the group through to the airport.