Orient-Express on the Irrawaddy

 

 

"Perhaps fittingly for a river ship in a devoutly Buddhist country, the Road To Mandalay has led a life of change and rebirth. Built in 1964, The Nederland cruised the Rhine for three decades before settling into a comfortable senescence as a floating hotel outside of Dresden. Then along came Orient-Express, which was in the market for a dependable shallow-draught vessel to ply Burma’s Irrawaddy River between the spectacular pagodas of Bagan and the storied city of Mandalay..."

"We passed our time reading, chatting with our enthusiastic fellow passengers, consulting a house astrologer, and enjoying the ceaselessly captivating spectacle of life along the Irrawaddy. Beginning in the Himalayas and ending in the Andaman Sea, the Irrawaddy is Burma’s longitudinal lifeline: Farmers harvest along its rich alluvial banks, and villages hum with trade and transport. River traffic consists of bamboo fishing boats, lumbering teak barges and double-decker ferries festooned with drying laundry..."