Burma (Myanmar) is a land of rivers. Not just the Irrawaddy river, navigable for 1000 miles, or its main tributary the Chindwin river, navigable for 600 miles, but other rivers too. The Salween river is actually the longest river in Burma. The Kaladan system in the Arakan contains a thousand hundred miles of navigable waterway. The Great Irrawaddy Delta, with its seven main channels and several hundred lesser ones, is a vast... Read More

Burma (Myanmar) is a land of rivers. Not just the Irrawaddy river, navigable for 1000 miles, or its main tributary the Chindwin river, navigable for 600 miles, but other rivers too.

The Salween river is actually the longest river in Burma. The Kaladan system in the Arakan contains a thousand hundred miles of navigable waterway. The Great Irrawaddy Delta, with its seven main channels and several hundred lesser ones, is a vast water-world covering over 10,000 square miles.

In Burma for over one thousand years nearly all movement of people and goods, not to mention invaders, have travelled by river. In British colonial times the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company launched 1,200 vessels and became the largest fleet of privately owned ships in the world, ever.

Still to this day, despite the construction of railways in colonial times or roads in more recent times, the rivers remain key to transportation and for the traveller the only way to see the country. Like the Nile in Egypt, nearly all the vestiges of past Burmese dynasties are sited along the banks as our the great Buddhist sanctuaries, the most famous of which is Pagan (Bagan)

Read Less