During Myanmar’s colonial-British era, Maymyo — named “May Town” after Colonel May, then in charge of the 5th Light Infantry of the Bengal Army — offered a cool “hillside station” retreat from lowland Mandalay’s oppressive summer heat. Horses, ridden or pulling carriages, provided transportation to an environment more than a little reminiscent of home.

When the Mandalay-to-Maymyo railway was completed a few years after the station’s 1896 founding, Maymyo became the Burmese...