Shan Highlands & Inle Lake Serenade 2026–2027

Mingalabar! On arrival at Heho Airport in the heart of the Shan Highlands, your guide and driver welcome you for the beautiful 45-minute drive up to Kalaw at 1,320 metres – a winding road of pine forest, orange groves and highland farms.

Spend the afternoon falling for this nostalgic former British hill station: stroll the central market where Pa-O, Palaung and Danu villagers trade highland produce; descend into the golden, Buddha-filled chambers of Shwe U Min cave pagoda; and take an easy guided walk through the pines to Thein Taung monastery viewpoint for sweeping blue-ridge panoramas. Evening at leisure – Kalaw's little bakeries and Nepali-Burmese restaurants are a delight. Overnight in Kalaw.

Meals: No meals (welcome drink at hotel)

After breakfast, set off east through gorgeous highland scenery – mountain passes, cheroot-leaf farms and Pa-O villages in their indigo dress – via the Shan capital Taunggyi, where your traditional Pa-O guide joins (a courtesy required by local custom, and a wonderful cultural window).

Then, the moment of awe: Kakku. Nearly 2,500 stupas – some weathered brick, some gilded, many over 800 years old – stand rank upon rank in a single field, their thousands of hti bells chiming softly with every breeze. Wander the narrow corridors between them in near solitude; lunch afterwards at the hilltop restaurant overlooking the site (own account). This is the sight guests tell us they will never forget.

In the afternoon, descend from the hills to Nyaung Shwe jetty, where your private longboat waits. Your first glide out onto Inle Lake – mountains mirrored in still water, leg-rowing fishermen silhouetted against the late sun – is pure magic. Check in to your lakeside hotel. Overnight at Inle Lake.

Meals: Breakfast

A full day on the water among the Intha, 'the sons of the lake'. Watch the leg-rowing fishermen perform their balletic one-legged stroke with conical nets; drift along rows of floating gardens where tomatoes grow on islands of woven water hyacinth; and visit Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda, the lake's holiest shrine, whose five small Buddha images have vanished beneath decades of pilgrims' gold leaf.

In the stilt-house workshops of Inpawkhon, watch weavers draw gossamer thread from lotus stems – lotus-fibre cloth is made almost nowhere else on Earth – alongside silversmiths and cheroot rollers. If your dates align, we time the morning with the famous rotating five-day market, where hill peoples come down to trade by boat.

In the afternoon, cruise up a winding, bamboo-lined creek (a beautiful 45-minute boat adventure) to Indein: a hillside forest of hundreds of weathered 17th-century stupas, some gripped by trees, some freshly gilded, reached by a long covered stairway of carved teak columns. Sunset on the open lake on the way home. Overnight at Inle Lake.

Meals: Breakfast

Wake to the lake at its most beautiful – mirror-still, mist rising, fishermen out early. After breakfast, a final gentle outing: the teak-and-oval-windowed Shwe Yan Pyay Monastery near Nyaung Shwe, glowing red against the morning sky, and – time permitting – a tasting stop at Red Mountain Estate vineyard above the lake (optional, own account) or the Nyaung Shwe morning market.

Then your driver takes you to Heho Airport (about 1 hour) for your onward flight to Yangon, Mandalay or Bagan – or let us extend your journey seamlessly: many guests continue to Bagan for our 4-day Temple Odyssey or finish with the golden Shwedagon in Yangon.

Meals: Breakfast