Train travel in Myanmar: not suitable for the impatient (Yangon to Bagan)

Yangon Rail Station

Next stop on my Myanmar itinerary is Bagan, an ancient city in the dry plains comprised of Buddhist temples built from 1100 to about 1250. Bagan is due north of Yangon, and most travelers take the 10 hour air conditioned bus from Yangon to Bagan. We decided we wanted an "experience. " One of those travel memories that will last forever,  growing golden with distance from the actual event. Hence we chose the 16 hour overnight train from Yangon to Bagan. It seemed like an ideal way to experience the form of transport brought to Burma by the British and see the Myanmar countryside. What countryside we saw! For 20 hours we had our fill of countryside.

A common sign around Myanmar 

Train travel is highly romanticized--for reasons unclear to me. Maybe it is the idea of rolling through the countryside on a form of transport that once represented progress and adventure,  like Manifest Destiny. In countries with modern railway systems the journeys are more bearable;  I have had a few lovely, scenic train rides through bucolic England. However when you travel in a country like Myanmar,  abolish all hopes for smooth, quaint ride through rolling green hills. Really, I should have known better, but the romance of the railway got the better of me. I have the experience of two train adventures in Eastern Europe traveling in Soviet era train cars, both of which were delayed affairs with dodgy windows.  One of these trips was an overnight train from Serbia to Bulgaria that was supposed to be a sleeper car with beds. Instead it was six awkwardly overstuffed chairs,  amd Sam and I spent the night squeezed like sardines with 4 expansive,  surly Eastern European men.

Outskirts of Yangon 

Our current journey started well, a sleeper car with clean beds, and only three people to our car. Our scheduled 4pm train left the Yangon station promptly at 4:10pm and traveled quite slowly through the slums of Yangon built along the train tracks.  The track was already quite bumpy with a few jostles that got us swaying.  My companions and I speculated on whether the track would improve or worsen as we left the Yangon city limits.  We bumped along for about 2 hours enjoying the view of paddy fields when our train came to a slow stop.  I looked out the window to see five men in longyi looking intently at the wheels on our train car.  The sun was setting, flashlights were turned on to further inspect the problem,  the guy in the next compartment nonchalantly hopped out off the train to smoke a cigarette. Mechanical difficulty;  no big deal.  Thirty minutes later we started rolling again. As the train increased speed, the turbulence picked up with some bumps that felt like train might leap off the rails.

A tyoical train car

We were lucky in our Upper-class sleeper car. For $16.50 a ticket we each had our own bed, 4 sleeper compartments per car with  maximum 4 people to a compartment.  The standard class at $5  a ticket, consisted a train car filled 2 two aisles of two person wooden benches, with the  more than 30 people to a car. The passengers where sprawled on the benches or sleeping on the floor.


Around 8pm we stopped again at the Letpadan station. We must have been stopped for 20 minutes, as I walked in the direction of the dinning  car for beer to find our train car was no longer attached to the rest of the train.  I stepped off to investigate,  yes indeed we were a lone car, the rest of the train had been pulled onto a parallel set of tracks.  For reasons never made clear, we had an hour or so delay for the sleeper car to move from the back of the train to behind the engine.


After a dinner of sweet and sour chicken in the dining car where the chairs jumped with each bump, we retired to our compartment to sleep.  The upper berth was an oven, with the fan that mocked me with each oscillation,  never managing to send a breeze in my direction. It seemed every bump on the rails was risking a herniated disk.  So Sam and slept head to foot squeezed on the  bottom bunk.

Landscape in the central zone

Recently ploughed field ready for the monsoon

At 6am, I glimpsed pink sky of the recently risen sun, and the landscape had changed from dry rice paddy fields to the red dirt and scrubby trees of the central dry zone of Myanmar.  I was covered with a thin layer of grime, as through the night, the dust of the countryside settled on our sweaty bodies while we slept.

A seasoned passenger

With all the delays, and the fact that the train probably never went above 50 miles per hour,  our 16 hour train ride turned into 20 hours.It's the last few hours that make me curse train travel. As the sun rose,  our comparment slowly baked. Time  seemed stubbornly slow as we jostled through unchanging landscape of freshly ploughed  red dirt fields, palm trees, and villages of ratan amd bamboo shacks. By hour 18 I had cabin fever. No position was comfortable, neither seated on the sweat dampened bed nor squating  at the passage way window to feel some breeze. I felt so dirty,  no amount of wet wipes could clean away the sweaty grime. Then with no warning we were at our destination.  A porter came to our room saying "Bagan station." We were hustled off the train, our companion of 20 hours,  and into the midday heat of Bagan.

For your train trip through Myanmar, I recommend you bring: 1) snacks, water, and a flask to keep your spirits up 2) toilet paper, wet wipes and hand sanitize for serial cleansing throughout the ride 3) a headlamp and a fan because the lights and fan in our comparment were shoddy 4) reading material so you don't kill your travel companions 6) an immense amount of patience and mantra along the lines of " this is worth the experience."