Myanmar’s Road to Mandalay begins where two rivers meet
The Irrawaddy—officially Ayeyarwady—is Myanmar’s chief river and commercial waterway, about 1,350 miles (2,170 kilometres) long through the country’s centre. Its Pali-rooted name recalls Airāvatī, Indra’s elephant mount; Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem later gave it the nickname “The Road to Mandalay,” and a whole species of dolphin carries its name.
It forms in Kachin State where the N’mai and Mali meet, both fed by glaciers near 28° N. The N’mai, larger and too fierce for boats, rises at the Languela Glacier north of Putao; the smaller Mali can be navigated despite rapids. Its basin of about 400,000 square kilometres drains 61 percent of the country and includes five of its largest cities. Early European sailors called it the Pegu, after the Hanthawaddy kingdom’s capital, now Bago.
Boats can reach Bhamo, some 240 kilometres below the confluence, all year. Between Myitkyina and Mandalay the river squeezes through three gorges, one about 90 metres wide between limestone cliffs up to 90 metres tall, and near Kabwet a Holocene lava sheet, the Singu Plateau, forces it west. It then crosses the Dry Zone, heartland of the Bamar, joins the Chindwin and passes the oil town of Yenangyaung. Geologists suspect the upper river once drained south through today’s Sittaung. Nine arms spread through the delta, whose silt pushes the coast into the Andaman Sea about 50 metres a year.
Monsoon rain from mid-May to mid-October drives huge swings. Flow near the delta head averages about 15,112 cubic metres a second and has topped 40,393, while water levels at Mandalay can differ by more than 11 metres between February lows and August floods. Ports keep separate landings for high and low water, and some stretches shrink to 60 centimetres deep.
The river carried trade and fed irrigation canals as early as the sixth century. Its basin hosts roughly 200 fish species, with 119 to 195 found nowhere else, and the Irrawaddy dolphin is known for helping cast-net fishers. In 2007 the junta agreed to seven dams totalling 13,360 MW, including the 3,600 MW Myitsone Dam at the confluence, which raised alarm for dolphins and the Ganges shark; construction there has since stopped.
Source: Irrawaddy River
