january-2012

hen I was young, my aunts would recite
Rudyard Kipling’s poem Mandalay every
Christmas. It was the done thing in those
days to get together and read aloud, and as
my great-uncle had served with the British Army
out in Burma, Mandalay was their party piece. My
family had always had a fascination with Burma, and
the family connection made Kipling’s mythical
landscape of the country with its pagodas and palm
trees seem very much a part of our history. And yet
in all my years of travelling, I never visited Burma.
I knew Kipling’s breathless description of the
country as being ‘quite unlike any land you know’,
but the behaviour of the brutal military regime put
me off going. Th en I heard last autumn that Aung
San Suu Kyi – the democratically elected leader who
was released from her 20-year house arrest in 2010
– was asking tourists to visit, and I jumped at the
fi rst opportunity.
I was fortunate to briefl y meet Aung San Suu Kyi
in Yangon. Th e woman who is known simply as the
Lady, fi xed me with those strong, dark eyes and said:
‘Tell people to come to Burma.’ Having now sailed
the Irrawaddy River from Bagan to Mandalay I have
no hesitation in endorsing her words, but with one
rider. Go to Burma now. Go while Burma is unspoiled.
Go while you can still travel the Irrawaddy for days
and see nothing but fi shing boats, thatched villages,
shorelines of green palm trees and hundreds of golden
pagodas, suspended like tear drops between the sky
THE ROAD TO MANDALAY