The competition hots up in the Road to Mandalay, the first competitive rally to visit Myanmar :

The Romao de Sousa Volvo 142S is the new leader, here on the Bagan temple regularity section that the previous leaders, the Buehlers, failed to start. 

Myanmar continues to astonish competitors on the Road to Mandalay Rally. In its second week the event has ventured up into the hills, finding cooler temperatures, less frenetic traffic and a more rural way of life. Yet the sights still amaze and the people are as welcoming as ever. This must be the most smiling country on earth.

The driving has been great too, not least on the actual road to Mandalay. It's not the most picturesque of cities, but the journey was certainly memorable. Leaving Pindaya on Day Nine, the rally followed winding lanes through fertile rolling countryside reminiscent of England's West Country, golden Buddhist stupas rising above distant trees like church steeples. Approaching the twisty, steep and unfenced Yangwan Descent from the Eastern Shan plateau to the great Irrawaddy River, the road became ever narrower, the surface more bumpy and broken, asphalt, earth and foliage alike taking on a pale, dusty appearance. Mercifully free of growling lorries when the rally passed through, the ancient romance of this otherworldly little road was palpable, particularly in a classic car.

The most competitive navigators would have been more concerned with kilometres than with Kipling here, for the organisers had wisely designated this hazardous part of the route a regularity section, requiring an average speed of only 50kmh (31mph). The results produced a tightening at the top of the leaderboard, with just 21 seconds separating the 1938 BMW 327/28 of German couple Gerd and Birgit Buehler, the 1968 Volvo 142S of Portugal's Jose and Maria Romao de Sousa and the 1933 Lagonda M45 of Brits Richard Cunningham and Julian Hanson-Smith.

But motorsport can be cruel. Merely manoeuvring the BMW (above) into position for the start of the rally's most recent regularity test, among the 2,200 ruined pagodas in the spectacular Bagan Temple Zone , a momentary foot-fault by Gerd Buehler led to a catastrophic over-revving of the engine, bending valves and putting the car out of the event. The lead has thus been inherited by the Portuguese Volvo, with the 1971 BMW 2800 CS of Australians Roger Allen and Maggie Gray second and the Cunningham/Hanson-Smith Lagonda third. Fourth is the 1966 Aston Martin DB6 of Cayman Islands crew Julian Reddyhough and Gus Pope, while Alistair Caldwell and his 96-year-old mother, Dorothy, lie fifth in the 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud.