After a year in dry dock, on August 26, returns to the waters of the Ayeyarwady this legendary ship, even more luxurious than before, in which live a scandal crossing the great river of Burma.

The Ayeyarwady River is the only real highway in Burma, a stunning blow aquatic country splits into two almost intact, lined with spirituality and jungle, now known as Myanmar. Other vessels open for its hot chocolate step, but none comparable to the crossing nineteenth serving on a silver platter the Road to Mandalay from the city that borrows the name and more than 2,000 temples, pagodas and stupas spread by Bagan.

This old lady of 64, brought fifteen years ago from the Rhine to Burma by the owners of Orient-Express group to delve your guests for one of the most remote corners of the planet without giving up the luxury retail, will sail this August 26.

After almost a year in drydock to repair the damage caused in May 2008, cyclone Nargis, the Road to Mandalay has used the adversity to tart up and down. Under the command of architect and designer François Greck Ali Kennedy, hundreds of artisans have pains to restore its splendor to the old glory, for this new gait, offers cabins still wider to reduce its capacity from 108 to just 82 passengers .

Three or four-day cruises between Mandalay and Bagan, or an entire week for those who can afford the prohibitive rates of return journey, are the routes most frequently performed throughout the year except May and June, the months to interrupt their journeys to avoid the southwest monsoon.

During the day the boat guides lead visitors through the temples, pagodas and monasteries of the cities that overlook the Ayeyarwady. In return, the windows of the cabin can then spy, like a documentary, chores River toad. The splashing of children and women grooming their shores, fishermen and farmers, fishing villages among the rice fields of the world completely forgotten.

Also on board, a small spa with gym, a lounge and a piano bar in which to attend the lectures and small shows of artists that rise each evening, a restaurant level, but above all, a teak deck carpeted where hammocks surrounding the pool are erected in the most privileged vantage point to abandon the languid flow of this river that George Orwell said that shone “like drag diamonds.

It will be in this deck where the last day, hours before arriving in Bagan, the very early risers do well to wager to enjoy the enchanting dream excessiveness of stupas, solitary in the middle of the jungle, they appeared at each end of the mists of river and left traces of a kingdom. And if you still can imagine a more remote, the Road to Mandalay tuck a few times a year to the gorges and villages of Bhamo, already almost on the border with China, so far no one comes close.

With more reason than ever, 26 August the Mahamuni temple monks, that since the cruise started the procession come in every start to the season to give his blessings to the boat again extend its protection to the Road to Mandalay, and the handful of elected to serve on its passage and Burma are slowly unravels slowly, as in other time travel.

Some clues
The cruise rate ranges from 1.735 € per person for the passage of 3 nights in a standard cabin up to € 5910 for the cruise of 11 nights stay at your best suite, always including the roundtrip flights from Yangon to Mandalay or Bagan, transfers and guided tours throughout the route, plus the full board on board. The trip can be booked through agencies specializing in luxury getaways as Atlantis Viatges (Tel. 93 272 30 30), who proposed from € 3,850 flights from Spain and two weeks in Burma, with three days on the Road to Mandalay, and the temples of Angkor in neighboring Cambodia. Or you can book directly with Orient Express, on the occasion of launching the new ship offers those who make your reservation before 31 October a two-day extension in the luxurious Governor’s Residence in Yangon to complement any of their cruises until April 2010.