Taking the train to Mandalay

With shirts wet against our backs we reached the brow of the hill. I could finally see the view. And it was magnificent.

The vast sweep of the Salween River delta stretched at our feet towards the setting sun – red as a blood orange and leaking colour into the horizon. Crimson light shimmered off myriad streams, silhouetting stands of coconut palms and a distant boat ploughing a tiny, glittering wake. Mawlamyine city was off to our left, its towering pagodas brilliant as glowing embers in the dying light.

Low mist rose from the scrubby forest below and sound drifted up towards us – the distant tinkle of prayer bells swaying in the gentle breeze, a yell from fishermen casting their nets, the chatter of a passing parakeets. ‘Mist on the rice fields, the sun droppin’ slow, the tinkly templebells…’ Kipling’s poem was ‘long ago an’ fur away’ – but I understood his Victorian soldier stuck in winter London, and longing to be in Mawlamyine, on the road to Mandalay.

The next morning I was back on the railroad to Mandalay. The decrepit old Chinese carriages crashed and swung over the buckled rails, which were the original British stock. Burma passed by outside: in dusty lanes where monks sat sidesaddle on mopeds; and in paddy fields dotted with farmers in conical hats and ox carts older than John Constable’s 1821 The Hay Wain painting.

Station platforms were crowded with pink-robed nuns, families migrating with the entire contents of their houses and vendors clutching chickens. The train itself was a moving market. Women hustled through, offering everything from boiled eggs and barbecued sparrows to noodle salad – whipped up in a minute, mixed with cashew, chilli and raw onion and served on a banana leaf.

It was utterly enthralling. For the first eight hours. But then the bumps and dusty heat began to wear.

I arrived in Mandalay with the night, a splitting headache and a warm greeting from a new Burmese guide, Yan, who oozed efficiency and had me fed and checked-in to a hotel in no time at all. I woke to a golden dawn, croissants and an air-conditioned car, which whisked us through Mandalay.

We passed the walls of Mindon’s old palace, the U-Bein teak bridge silhouetted against the early sun, and crossed the giant, snaking Irrawaddy. By late morning we reached a low range of hills sitting under a dome of brilliant-blue sky. Yan led me down steps into a narrow gorge and smiled as he saw my jaw drop.

Stretching before us was a terrace of Edwardian townhouses. One was topped with a very English town hall clock. It looked like Windsor. But it was more like Petra – these weren’t buildings at all. They were the painted, carved facades of huge caves.

For two hours Yan led me through the caves of Hpo Win Daung, past facades topped with giant elephants to stone arches and Khmer-style filigree as ornate as a Fabergé ring. And as we walked through the hills we went back in time – from British Burma to the Burma of the great medieval kingdoms, whose life was depicted in astonishingly detailed brilliant-red murals.

I realised I’d been travelling through Burmese history since I arrived – through tribal life and royal mansions, through Japanese and British occupation and into military dictatorship.

Come now, before Myanmar changes, travellers had told me. Before it loses its soul. But Myanmar has always changed. And always stayed the same. For in every one of hundreds of caves I’d seen – behind every changing facade, and in the soul of Burma itself – sat the Buddha. Timeless and serene.


Selective Asiaoffers an 18-day Railways Old and New trip to Thailand and Burma, with visits to Kanchanaburi, Dawei, Mawlamyine, Yangon and northern Burma, including B&B accommodation, internal flights, transfers and guides.

All images by Alex Robinson, unless otherwise credited.