The
Irrawaddy River or
Ayeyarwady River (, , also spelt
Ayeyarwaddy) is a river that flows from north to south through
Myanmar. It is the country's largest river and most important commercial waterway. Originating from the confluence of the
N'mai and
Mali rivers, it flows relatively straight North-South before emptying through the
Irrawaddy Delta into the
Andaman Sea. Its
drainage basin of about covers a large part of Burma. After
Rudyard Kipling's poem, it is sometimes referred to as '
The Road to Mandalay'.