To visit Burma is a spellbinding experience - one is enveloped by a never-before-felt atmosphere, by the feeling of being in another world. While the country writhes in its changing political and social structures, the spired pagodas, golden temples, countless Buddha images, saffron-clad monks and nuns and, above all, the panoply of so many ethnic tribes creates what is almost the sense of being in a fairy-tale land.

The is particularly true when the cities and their sophistication is left behind - when open fields and ancient monuments beckon, when those places are reached that are beyond the pain and the suffering of this poorly developed nation - because the tentacles of power do not yet reach to these isolated pockets.

It was to these locales that I traveled to find and photograph as much as possible of what is so unique, so remarkable, so fascinating about Burma - now re-named Myanmar.