january-2012

and the ground. Th is is the Burma I was fortunate
enough to witness – the magical country of my
family’s history and of Kipling’s stories.
I fl ew into Yangon (the city Rudyard Kipling
knew as Rangoon) and stayed at the Governor’s
Residence, a colonial-era hotel run by Orient Express.
Everything felt very safe and people talked openly
about their hopes for the future. After two busy days
touring the city by cycle rickshaw and meeting up
with the Lady I fl ew north to Bagan. Here I joined
my cruise on the Irrawaddy, the 2,200km river that
fl ows from northern Burma to the Andaman Sea, and
which is still central to Burma’s trade and transport.
Old Bagan is a deserted, overgrown city
seemingly built entirely of pagodas, sitting on a bend
of the mighty river. I discovered straight away that
pagodas sum up Burma more than anything else –
more than rickshaw cyclists and lacquerware
salesmen, more than ox-cart taxis and Buddhist
monks with their furled umbrellas. It is believed
there are over four million pagodas in Burma and
more are being built all the time. A new pagoda is
considered a fi tting end to a life well-lived. Indeed
there is a saying that if you are standing in Burma
and cannot see a pagoda, then you are not in Burma.
As we drove through the Indiana Jones landscape
of Bagan my driver explained that the city was
founded as the Burmese capital in 874 by King
Pyinbya. Most of its 2,000-plus pagodas and temples
were built between the 11th and 13th centuries; at
military regime, but now democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi is asking the
world to visit. Adrian Mourby follows the ghost of Kipling to Mandalay
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