10 Days in Myanmar

This ten-day route is built for travelers who want Myanmar’s hill country and its last royal capital, with a real trek in the middle rather than a string of city stops. The style is active but unhurried: two nights almost everywhere, one night in a village. You’ll need a domestic flight from Yangon to Heho, local taxis or pickups in the Shan hills, a boat across the lake at the end of the trek, and either a flight or bus to Mandalay.

Days 1-2: Yangon

Use Yangon to get over the flight and get tuned in. Two nights let you wander the downtown grid of peeling colonial facades and Indian and Chinese quarters, eat mohinga at a tea shop for breakfast, and settle into the slower rhythm of the country before heading into the hills.

Days 3-4: Kalaw

Fly to Heho and take a taxi about an hour to Kalaw, an old British hill station at around 1,300 meters where the nights are cool and the morning market fills with Pa-O, Danu and Shan traders. Spend a full day walking the pine ridges and arranging your trek … read more 👉

This ten-day route is built for travelers who want Myanmar’s hill country and its last royal capital, with a real trek in the middle rather than a string of city stops. The style is active but unhurried: two nights almost everywhere, one night in a village. You’ll need a domestic flight from Yangon to Heho, local taxis or pickups in the Shan hills, a boat across the lake at the end of the trek, and either a flight or bus to Mandalay.

Days 1-2: Yangon

Use Yangon to get over the flight and get tuned in. Two nights let you wander the downtown grid of peeling colonial facades and Indian and Chinese quarters, eat mohinga at a tea shop for breakfast, and settle into the slower rhythm of the country before heading into the hills.

Days 3-4: Kalaw

Fly to Heho and take a taxi about an hour to Kalaw, an old British hill station at around 1,300 meters where the nights are cool and the morning market fills with Pa-O, Danu and Shan traders. Spend a full day walking the pine ridges and arranging your trek with a local guide; the outfitters here handle bag transfer to the lake.

Days 5-6: Trekking to Inle

The walk from Kalaw to Inle Lake runs through red-earth farmland, tea plots and hill villages, with a night in a village house or monastery. This two-day version is the right length for most people; legs feel it, but nobody is miserable. It ends with a boat ride across Inle Lake past leg-rowing fishermen to Nyaungshwe.

Days 6-8: Nyaungshwe and the Pa-O Stupas

Two nights in Nyaungshwe give you time to recover in a canal-side guesthouse and cycle to the vineyards on the hill east of town. On day 7, drive through Taunggyi, the Shan State capital, where you pick up the required Pa-O guide, then continue about an hour to the Kakku Pagodas, a field of more than 2,000 stupas topped with tinkling bells. On day 8, fly from Heho or ride a bus to Mandalay.

Days 8-10: Mandalay

In Mandalay, start before dawn at Mahamuni Buddha Temple for the face-washing ritual of its heavily gilded image. Later, visit Kuthodaw Pagoda, where 729 marble slabs carved with Buddhist scripture each sit in their own white shrine, then climb Mandalay Hill (about 240 meters) for the view over the city grid. Save your final sunset for U Bein Bridge, the long teak footbridge in Amarapura, before flying out on day 10.

For a bonus morning, take the river boat from Mandalay to Mingun and stand at the base of the colossal, earthquake-cracked Mingun Pahtodawgyi, the unfinished stupa that was meant to be the largest in the world.