Travel from Bagan to Inle Lake

The easiest way to travel from Bagan to Inle Lake is to take a direct bus service to Nyaung Shwe town, which is a journey of 324 km. From Nyaung Shwe town it is a 14 km journey by road to Inle Lake.

Bus Times to Inle Lake

There are two direct bus services a day from Bagan to Nyaung Shwe town, near Inle Lake, which you can book online.

• Bagan Min Tha bus ticket: $ 18.00 for the 19:00 departure and $22.80 for the 20:30 departure, which is a VIP service with more room for each person.

Buy Tickets to Inle Lake

Use the Search Box below to buy your bus tickets from Bagan to Inle Lake.

Bagan Bus Station

Bus services from Bagan to Inle depart from Bagan Shwe Pyi Highway Bus Terminal.

Inle Lake Bus Stop

Bus services from Bagan terminate on Yone Gyi Street in Nyaung Shwe town near Inle Lake.

About Inle Lake

Inle Lake is a fascinating and unique place to visit combining a rare geographical phenomenon with a distinctive local culture and some unusual plants and fish found nowhere else. The special things about Inle Lake are this combination of natural geography and human interaction. The lake itself is fairly large with a surface area of around 116 square kilometres located at an altitude of 880 metres above sea level. The lake is also very shallow with the deepest point in the lake being somewhere between 3.5 and 5 metres in depth depending on the time of year. The shallowness of the lake makes it a popular habitat for migrating birds and a number of specialised fish species and other aquatic creatures.

Unlike some of the deeper great lakes around the world, Inle Lake is inhabited by a large population known as Intha who reside in 4 large settlements on the banks of the lake. Although the origins of the Intha can be traced back to multiple ethnic group indigenous to Myanmar they have their own unique culture and cuisine. One of the distinctive characteristics of the Intha people is the way they fish, paddling their boats using their feet to allow them a better vantage point to negotiate the thick vegetation floating in the lake than they would have if they rowed their boats sitting down. Another unusual practice common to the Intha people is the creation of floating gardens on the lake. As well as making a living from fishing, and more recently taking tourists on boat tours, the Intha creating floating gardens by combining reeds with silt and securing these floating seed beds with bamboo stakes. Vegetables, such as beans and tomatoes, which need little soil to grow are produced in substantial amounts on these floating gardens. Inle Lake is also used for trade with regular floating markets rotating around the lake on set days. These floating markets are a popular tourist attraction.