This 1,350-mile long river/road is a major contributor to both the economy and culture of the country. It flows southward nearly the length of the country, splitting off into a handful of branches as it enters the Andaman Sea, and its flood plain is one of the country's major agricultural areas. Floods come each year with the rainy season, which means that all the houses and villages along the river are built on stilts.

Last year's floods were the highest they had been in more than 25 years, and while they undoubtedly caused some hardship, they also scoured away a lot of the debris and trash of villages, giving them a cleaner, fresher look than you find in many places where people live close to the land.

Many of the villages along the river are accessible only by water; no roads connect them with overland locations. Typical is Yandabo, a pottery village. The people gather clay from the river and make thousands of pots — turned on foot-powered wheels, stamped and decorated by hand, and then piled on top of each other in the center of the village, which is turned into a make-shift kiln as straw is piled over the pots and they are fired. The pots are then sold to a broker, who takes them by boat to markets downstream.

Mandalay itself is a beautiful city, barely 150 years old. Sitting on the banks of the Ayeyarwady, it was founded as the capital of the final Burmese kingdom in 1857. With a population of two million, it is second only to Yangon in size.

The name means "center of the world," and for many Buddhists it is an important center for study, at places such as the Kuthodaw Pagoda. Called by some "the world's biggest book," this pagoda is surrounded by 729 white marble slabs inscribed with the entire Buddhist canon; each slab housed in its own stupa. If you worked for eight hours a day, it would take some 450 days to read the entire "book," which was built in 1857 at the same time as the Royal Palace in Mandalay.

• ALL THAT GLITTERS. Myanmar is also known as "The Golden Land" for very good reason. Everywhere you look, there are pagodas and temples with golden spires reaching skyward.

As we sailed into Mandalay, the Sagaing Hills reminded us of meringue, with all their white- and gold-tipped peaks.

Every city, town and village has its own shrines, its own reminders of Buddha. "Shwe" means gold in Burmese, and wherever you see that prefix, you know there's gold: the Shwemawdaw Pagoda in Bago, which at 374 feet is the country's tallest.; the Shwethalyaung Reclining Buddha, which is 180 feet long and has footprints that tell the history of the world — (it is only outdone by the Chaukhtatkyi Reclining Buddha in Yangon, which measures 230 feet long).

There's the Shwezigon Pagoda in Bagan with four gold Buddhas; and the world's largest lacquer Buddha, built in the 13th century and found floating down the river, rescued and gilded, in nearby Sale.

Many of the pagodas are covered with scaffolding a good part of the year. After every rainy season, the gold-leafing must be repaired.