Mandalay is one of the most evocative names on the planet. Kipling celebrated it and Sinatra sang the melody. The capital of Burma prior to British rule and known as the Golden City, Mandalay was constructed in the nineteenth century by the last of the imperial leaders and is still redolent of its imperial past as the heartland of Burmese culture and faith. Its enormous marketplace is a flourishing phantasmagoria of earthy smells and a polyglot mixture of cultures.

Mandalay is the starting point for a journey down the Ayeyarwady River, the country’s immense natural highway and the central point of Burmese life.

The metropolitan centres of its 2,500-year-old civilisation line the banks, including the town of Bagan, where, along 13 kilometres of riverbank, some 2,200 Buddhist pagodas are located so close together that they look like a forest of spires and pinnacles.

Founded by a Burmese king in AD 849, Bagan reached its highest point about 1,000 and was deserted in 1283 when Kubilai Khan, in control of northern India, swept south with his soldiers. It was thought that building sacred structures gained merit for an emperor and his people, so a throng of skilled artisans decorated this spiritual centre with what might originally have been more than 10,000 spiritual monuments.