Yangon, Mandalay & Central Myanmar

The first cities here belonged to the Pyu, who from the early centuries AD built walled towns such as Sri Ksetra, near Pyay in Bago Region, and Beikthano in Magway; with Halin to the north they form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. From the 11th century the Bamar kingdom of Bagan, under King Anawrahta and his successors, unified the Ayeyarwady valley and covered its plain with temples before Mongol invasions in the late 13th century broke its power.

For the next five centuries the capitals moved up and down the river. Inwa (Ava) ruled the dry zone for long periods, while in the south the Mon kingdom of Hanthawaddy made Bago a rich port city. The Toungoo dynasty, from the town of that name in Bago Region, conquered Bago in the 16th century, and under Bayinnaung it was the seat of an empire that reached into Siam. The Konbaung kings of the 18th and 19th centuries ruled from Inwa, Amarapura and finally Mandalay, founded by King Mindon in 1857. Alaungpaya, the dynasty's founder, had captured Dagon and renamed it Yangon in 1755.

Britain took the south in 1852 and made Rangoon the capital of the colony; Mandalay fell in 1885 and King Thibaw was exiled. Rangoon grew into a port of Indian, Chinese and European merchants, and Mandalay's palace burned in the fighting of 1945. In 2005–06 the military moved the capital to the new city of Naypyidaw. After the 2021 coup the cities saw mass protests put down with lethal force, and fighting spread into the dry-zone countryside.

This is the Bamar heartland, and Burmese language, Theravada Buddhism and royal tradition are at their most concentrated here. Mandalay regards itself as the guardian of classical culture: its workshops beat gold leaf for pilgrims to press onto Buddha images, carve marble and wood, weave acheik silks at Amarapura and keep marionette theatre, the zat pwe stage shows and classical dance alive. Pilgrims come from across the country to the Mahamuni image, whose face is washed each morning by monks.

The older nat spirit cult is strongest in the dry zone. Mount Popa, near Bagan, is the home of the Mahagiri nats, and the Taungbyone festival north of Mandalay each August draws huge crowds, spirit mediums and music. Bagan is the centre of lacquerware made from bamboo and horsehair layered with lacquer.

Yangon is different: a port city shaped by its colonial century, with Hindu temples, mosques, Chinese clan houses, churches and a synagogue within a few streets of the Sule Pagoda, and a younger, more outward-looking population that led much of the protest movement in 2021. Across the region, pagoda festivals on the full moons of Tabaung and Thadingyut, and Thingyan's water-throwing in April, remain the high points of the year.

Yangon is the country's largest city, with around five million people, and its commercial centre: garment factories on the industrial fringes, the port on the Yangon River and the old downtown grid of shophouses and markets. Mandalay, with over a million, is the hub of Upper Myanmar and of trade with China, including the jade market. Naypyidaw, with official population figures around a million spread over a huge area, is a city of ministries, civil-servant housing and near-empty roads. Bago, Pyay, Taungoo, Magway and Pakokku are the main provincial towns.

The dry zone lives from sesame, groundnuts, pulses and cotton, toddy palms and the old oil fields around Yenangyaung and Chauk in Magway, while Bago Region grows rice and once supplied much of the country's teak. Tourism in Bagan and Mandalay, which employed thousands, has largely collapsed since 2021.

Days start early with monks on the alms round and breakfast in the teashops, which remain the centre of social life. Since the coup the rhythm has been shaped by power cuts lasting many hours, fuel and price rises, curfews and checkpoints, and the flight of young people from conscription. Villages across the dry zone have been burned in the fighting, and many residents have moved to the towns or further.

Yangon's version of mohinga, the fish and rice-noodle soup thickened with toasted rice flour and banana stem, is eaten from street stalls at dawn, and the city's Indian heritage gives it dan bauk, a spiced chicken or mutton biryani, palata flatbreads and samosa salads. Ohn no khauk swe, noodles in a coconut-milk chicken soup, is a lunchtime staple.

Mandalay claims its own noodle dishes: mee shay, rice noodles with a pork or chicken sauce and a sharp dressing, and nan gyi thoke (also called Mandalay mont di), a salad of thick rice noodles with chicken curry, toasted chickpea flour and fried onion. The dry zone's cooking uses groundnut and sesame oil, pulses and beans rather than the fish of the south, and laphet thoke, the fermented tea-leaf salad, is ubiquitous.

The toddy palm is the dry zone's emblem: its sap is boiled into lumps of palm jaggery eaten after meals as a sweet, and fermented into a mild palm toddy. Sweet, strong milk tea is the region's everyday drink, with Mandalay's teashops considered among the best.

Yangon's Shwedagon Pagoda is the spiritual centre of the country, a gilded stupa about 110 metres tall surrounded by a terrace of shrines, best seen at dusk. The Sule Pagoda anchors the colonial downtown of the Secretariat, the High Court and the Strand, and the Chaukhtatgyi reclining Buddha and Kandawgyi Lake lie to the north. Bago, a few hours north-east, has the tall Shwemawdaw Pagoda and the Shwethalyaung reclining Buddha; on the Ayeyarwady, Pyay gives access to the Pyu ruins of Sri Ksetra.

Naypyidaw's sights are the Uppatasanti Pagoda, modelled on the Shwedagon, the parliament complex and the city itself, with its multi-lane highways.

Bagan is the region's great sight: more than two thousand temples and stupas, among them the Ananda, the Dhammayangyi, the Thatbyinnyu, the Htilominlo and the gilded Shwezigon at Nyaung-U, inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019. Mount Popa and the monastery on the volcanic plug of Taung Kalat rise to the south-east.

Mandalay has its moated palace, the view from Mandalay Hill, the Kuthodaw Pagoda's hundreds of marble slabs carved with Buddhist scripture, the teak Shwenandaw Monastery and the Mahamuni Pagoda. The former capitals nearby include Amarapura, with the U Bein Bridge across Taungthaman Lake, and Inwa, reached by boat and horse-cart. The Ayeyarwady river towns downstream — Pakokku, Salay, Magway and Pyay — show the river trade the kingdoms were built on.