Burmese girls wearing thanaka, a traditional cosmetic paste, traveling on a train from Yangon to Bagan, Myanmar.

Burmese girls wearing thanaka, a traditional cosmetic paste, traveling on a train from Yangon to Bagan, Myanmar.

BURMA

“It’s as if all the Gothic cathedrals were clustered in one spot" — Donald Stadtner, author of “Sacred Sites of Burma", on the ancient royal capital, Bagan.

Kipling once wrote of Burma, “…it will be quite unlike any land you know about.” Wondrous, lush, and steeped in history, for decades Myanmar was mostly cut off to travelers. It's a new era for this complex land, where the traditional ways of Asia endure.