Mandalay

Behind Mandalay's traffic sits the country's living centre of tradition — gold-beaters' workshops still hand-hammer leaf for the Mahamuni Buddha, a devotional image so thickly gilded by centuries of pilgrims that its original form has become a rounded golden mass, and the city's monastic universities educate a genuinely significant share of the country's monks. Classical dance and marionette theatre still perform in evening venues rather than existing only as museum pieces. Mandalay Hill, climbed or driven at dawn, frames the whole city and river below — the standard way most visitors close a Mandalay day.

Amarapura's U Bein Bridge — 1.2 kilometres of reclaimed teak posts across Taungthaman Lake, the world's longest teak span — is the region's most photographed sunset, monks and cyclists crossing in silhouette against the water. Sagaing, across the Irrawaddy, covers its hillsides in white-and-gold stupas and working meditation centres, one of the country's largest concentrations of monastic life. Inwa's ruins are toured by horse-cart through banana groves rather than on foot, a deliberately slower pace than the rest of the circuit. Mingun, upriver by boat, holds an unfinished, earthquake-cracked colossal pagoda base alongside an intact 90-tonne bell, one of the largest ringing bells in the world.

Pyin Oo Lwin, two hours up-mountain from Mandalay, keeps its British-era character genuinely intact — a botanical garden laid out by Turkish prisoners of war in 1915 and still maintained, half-timbered colonial villas, strawberry farms taking advantage of the cooler elevation, and horse-drawn carriages still used as everyday local transport rather than a tourist novelty alone. Further along the same rail line, the Gokteik viaduct — a century-old steel trestle crossing a 300-metre gorge — remains one of Asia's great railway crossings where services are operating; current status is worth confirming before planning a trip specifically around it.

Practically, Bagan is reached from Mandalay by a short domestic flight or, for a slower and genuinely scenic alternative, an Irrawaddy River boat journey of around 12 hours downstream. Old Bagan, New Bagan and Nyaung-U are the three towns most visitors base in, each offering a different balance of proximity to the temple plain versus accommodation range.