Burma river cruise: upriver to an Asia of yesteryear But while the boat is short on luxury, the journey itself is a treat - a rare glimpse into the Asia of yesteryear, where Buddhism remains a way of life. And as we cast off in a misty dawn from the riverside town of Monywa near Mandalay it seems right that we are exploring the Chindwin on this souped-up version of a local passenger boat. Our journey upstream, and against the current, to the British colonial port of Mawlaik will take three days. On the way back we will stop twice a day at villages and small towns including Minkin, Kani and Pokkoku before joining the Irrawaddy and our final port of call, the temple town of Pagan (Bagan). A pagoda in the riverside town of Monywa At our first stop the following morning, the crew acts as human posts for the bamboo rail that aids our climb up the slippery mud bank. Word spreads that foreigners have arrived and as we walk along the recently swept village street, women lay aside their twig brooms and beckon us into large shuttered teak homes raised on stilts. Soon, we are all sitting at someone's breakfast table drinking tea and eating the local treat of green tea leaves fermented in sesame oil with spices and peanuts. My elderly host is smoking an enormous cheroot. How many does she smoke a day? I inquire via our Burmese guide, Toni. "Three," she says with a toothless grin. But the first one is always the best. She offers me one, which I politely decline. As we press on upstream, we are overtaken by riverboats packed to the gunwales with 50-gallon oil drums, Volvo earthmovers and four-wheel-drives bound for the copper mines farther upriver. Boats heading down are piled high with cabbages, bamboo poles, sacks of charcoal and empty drink bottles. Occasionally a traditional log raft floats past, the massive teak trunks roped beneath a bamboo platform. It takes three years for teak to dry sufficiently to float in water, so today the logs are often loaded onto barges using JCBs and nudged downstream by a tug. At Kalewa, the first town on our journey, we are met by an immigration officer wearing a neatly pressed white uniform. He inspects our permits carefully before we are allowed ashore. We're here, according to our British tour leader Mark Steadman, to find ingredients for lunch. Smiles soon replace the first looks of astonishment, as we wander through the market where unfamiliar fruit and vegetables are arranged like works of art. Mark, who lives in neighbouring Laos, is no stranger to the delicacies to be uncovered in a south Asian market. But some of us can't wait that long; the street food is just too tempting. I join a group of children at one of the restaurants near their school for a second breakfast: rice puffballs stuffed with egg, onion and coriander, tempura vegetables and a coconut pancake. Across the way, a jolly woman is selling a glistening pile of brown goo. "This is something for women to eat," she confides. It makes us strong. A group tasting concludes it contains shaved coconut, tea leaves, black treacle and unknown spices. It's surprisingly moreish. The two chefs on-board turn Mark's market purchases into a delicate vegetable soup and plates of exotic, mildly spiced curries. We taste dishes from all over Burma: river shrimp in garlic, delicately stuffed pork in a spicy bean sauce and a superb mohingha, a chicken version of the traditional noodle soup eaten for breakfast. There is beer from Mandalay, wine from Inle Lake and, as the sun goes down, Mark mixes a group cocktail of local rum and whatever exotic fruit he has found in the market. As evening falls we make our own entertainment: a twirl after dinner to music played via iPod speaker on the back deck, an impromptu book club meeting and a best-in-local-dress competition where we try - and fail - to appear as elegant as the Burmese in their traditional floor-length lyongis . Daylight hours on the river are never dull. We watch farmers ploughing the silt-rich riverbank to plant peanuts as the water level falls and rare woolly-necked storks and common ruddy shelducks potter around on sandbanks. Every few miles another village is announced by a row of white bell-shaped Buddhist stupas climbing away to a hilltop pagoda. At Mawlaik, the headquarters of the Bombay Burma Trading Company and the District Forestry Office in colonial times, we tie up at a cobbled quay built by the British. Flights of steps lead to a riverside promenade shaded by magnificent old trees. A holiday in Mawlaik was the dream that sustained many a company man after working for months in the forest running teams of elephants to extract the teak. It was a place to relax in a hot bath, catch up on the news, and get drunk with old friends. Their "chummeries," rambling Edwardian brick houses in overgrown gardens, remain. In 1920, a young Cornishman, James Howard Williams, arrived here to take up a post with Bombay Burma. His remarkable Boy's Own adventures in the jungles of Burma are brilliantly captured in his memoir, Elephant Bill. It includes a nail-biting account of him leading the exodus of elephants and refugees across the mountains to India in 1942 as the Japanese advanced across the Chindwin. His elephant companies then returned to pave the way, literally, for Allied tanks, armoured cars and soldiers to retake Burma two years later. The weight of history is palpable as we walk along a cobbled track that probably dates back to Elephant Bill's time towards the forested hills where elephants are still used to log the steepest slopes. At a small camp, elephant oozies are using retired pachyderms in their sixties to show teenagers how to lift and manoeuvre massive logs. The matriarch puts in an impressive performance before going down to the river for a wash. Oozies form close bonds with their charges and this is a government-paid job for life they tell us: the oldest tusker died recently, aged 115. But once the elephants have been turned out to graze, the younger oozies jump on their motorbikes and head for the tea-houses of Mawlaik, just like the old days. Back in Mawlaik, I meet 72-year-old U Thant Zin, a retired English teacher. He takes me to his home, an old teak house in a palm-shaded street, and shouts out to the three young women inside that he has found someone who can speak the "real" English. They are schoolteachers from villages upstream who come for private tuition with Mr Zin every weekend because he has a good accent. At first too shy to speak to me, the words soon come tumbling out. How should you pronounce tourist, series and theatre? They can read English, they say, but speaking it correctly is very hard without proper help. The current makes our journey back downriver twice as fast. It is packed with heart-warming incidents: there's the village where a local that asks if we have a dollar bill as he's never seen one; the man who softly strokes Michael's calves to check if he's whitened them with powder; and the rapt teahouse audience watching Burma's favourite footballer, Wayne Rooney, in a Premier League match. It is well-travelled Pam who captures the spirit of our river journey, putting into words what we have all been thinking. I feel like a real traveller for the first time.