Bagan is home to the largest and most dense concentration of Buddhist temples, pagodas, and stupas in the world with many dating from the 11th and 12th centuries. Of the ten thousand pagodas that were built two thousand remain in various states of repair. We planned to see as many of them as possible.
We arrived quite weary after a 10 hour boat trip down the Irrawaddy river – long and slow BUT a great experience and we thought it would beat a cramped bus and an equally long ride. I stayed on deck most of the time looking for pink dolphins (the etrnal optimist 🙂 sigh none to be seen… this time hehe) However the gorgeous views of the pagoda studded hills almost made up for it.
Day one, we set off ultra early, as it gets unbearably hot by noon. Armed with a map (an extremely inaccurate one, we later found out) and 2 mopeds we set off on exploration day one. We only ever found two main paved roads :). The roads we drove around were sandy, cart tracks which crisscrossed the plain in every direction. It didn’t take long for us to realise following the map was futile! We put the map away and allowed the day to unfold as it was supposed to. Like giddy kids on a treasure hunt we yelled from our bikes, “lets go this way” or “that way looks good” such good fun and the rewards never disappointed.
We zig zagged over the sandy landscape down the narrow lanes, on and on until we saw the glimpse of this temple. This was our first big “discovery”. We parked our bikes, as the track became a river bed, impassable for our motorbike skills. On foot we scrambled through the foliage and climbed the uneven steps. The grill at the entrance, which should have been locked wasn’t, and Lance opened it and we snuck inside. It was dark and dusty, bat guano lay thick on the floor. As our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom we could see wonderful paintings on the walls and ceiling. Four buddhas gazed down in meditation. We felt like Indiana Jones and Howard Carter rolled into one we were explorers!! such a great feeling to be there alone.
And then on to the next place to explore.
The traffic 🙂
Next we stumbled upon Nanda-ma-nya-Hpaya, famed for its beautiful buddhavamsa paintings. Such a beautiful atmosphere in here .The buddha look so different to the ones in other countries we have seen.
After a few days we were confident we couldn’t take a wrong turn. Literally in every direction you looked there was a temple or pagoda in various repair calling us.
We would park our bikes and wander. Almost alone, and when we did meet a fellow tourist at one of the sites – a common question we were asked was, “can you take our picture? This time we did the same!!
Finding silent places, reflective spaces that were so energizing, so magical we stayed for ages and there was just so many secret places down every lane.
It was hard to ever get home at the end of the day we would always see another tantalizing ruin and we never knew if we could find it again so we would say just one more !!
One day, somehow (cos we not even using google maps now) we ended up at the river. And how lovely it looked. Of course there was a beautiful temple perched on the banks – Puppets hung from the trees ladies visiting to worship and a gaggle of ragamuffins begging us to buy postcard and sling shots of all things.
Behind the most of the temples was a small hamlet this one particularly colourful.
Looking for the famous sunset spots is very hard these days as the government has stopped all climbing on the temples. We heard from a source that this was the last place we could get an elevated view of the plains – so firing up google maps we plugged in the coordinates and raced to get our shots – Unfortunately this temple is now closed to climbing. However we had a delightful chat with this lady whoose family had taken care of this temple for generations she took us around telling us of her family story. No elevated view but still some lovely scenes on our way home.
We were rewarded with some wonderful encounters with this group of monks out enjoying the view too.
We got very lost on the way home – our weak wifi signal messed with google maps which took us on a bizarre and very pitch black journey over rough roads and through a garbage dump complete with a large number of scavenging dogs (Scary). We did start to get alarmed, wondering how on earth we would find the main road with no google, no good paper map and no light! eventually we found a person and showed then the name of our hotel and he directed us through more crazy dark lanes!! we laugh now but at the time not so funny!! Adventures!!
The joy of Bagan for us was the little lanes and rough roads that had treasure down almost all of them. Aside from the smaller temples there are some vast ones and we wanted to check them out. There are 10 or so huge temples that are considered “must sees”. The largest of all of them, is Dhammayan, built during the reign of King Narathu (1167-1170). He was a nasty piece of work, who came to the throne by murdering his father and his elder brother, to atone for his sins he built this massive temple. It had a very ominous feeling . A very heavy atmosphere, maybe because of it’s incredible height and dark corridors. At the temple’s center everything was bricked up for an unknown reason. Sinister theories include walling up people to have their spirits as protectors of the space and walling up the architect so he could never repeat the design anywhere else. A very spooky place not at all temple like.
Anther giant on the Bagan Plain is Htilo Minlo Temple – towering at 46 meters it is the highest temple and is visible from many areas on the plain. All the way around the temple were vendors selling a colourful mix clothes, carvings, beautiful fabrics. The hill tribe people come and sell their wares 2 ladies here from Kayan tribe distinctive by their neck and leg rings.
Myanmars incredible pertrified forests. All along the roads as we travelled we saw huge chunks of petrified wood. Pieces were being used to prop open doors used as thresh holds for huts, or fence posts to keep the goats at bay. It wasn’t hard to find a good piece to carry home. Lance just sighed. I’ve got so many rocks in my backpack!!! OMG my 2 favourite things combined trees and rocks!! I had to buy some. I bought a petrified stone bracelet and and this adorable carved froggie.
Then we saw this pile at one of the temples, huge pieces which made our finds look like twigs! The large pieces are incredibly valuable and are just one more thing that is being smuggled out of Myanmar.
Here is another of Lance’s just one more! This one so cool as we could see thousand year old hand prints of the tile makers.
Dhamima ya zi ka was so energizing and moving. We saw the golden spire through the trees and decided to find it. So pretty and we were so fortunate to share the experience with a group of visiting nuns. There was a wonderful feeling of energy here. We were interested to see the photos and all that blurred light at the spire I took many pics from different angles and they all looked like this.
Our hotel in Bagan was one of our favourites in our whole 7 month trip. The most beautiful pool and grounds. A gorgeous king plus bed in a huge room. The balcony was lovely in the morning and we could watched the balloons on their early flights over Bagan.
A casual conversation with the front desk, revealed the alarming news that the hotel only takes cash! Whaaaat, yikes we’ve been here for 7 days and owe them at least five hundred dollars. It was actually a huge problem. Our card has a chip (like all of us in North America) which is only recognised by one bank here. The other problem was the $100 daily cash allowance and only 3 transactions a in a 24 hour period. Luckily we had just enough time to scrape the funds together – I really cant imagine what we would have done on the morning of check out when they asked for cash and we had nowherenear enough – be warned here cash is king. This pic is our stash of Kyat collected with precision timed visits to the cash machine. We were multi millionaires. Nice to dream 🙂
Oh Bagan the best fun ever, we don’t want to leave. Six hour winding, bus ride tomorrow up through the mountain pass to Kalaw. I will have to decide if I dare do the 3 day trek into the mountains with out Lance. His foot is NOT good enough to walk 70kms. Can I do it? Feeling like I can and if I don’t I will regret it. Lance urging me to go for it 🙂
2 thoughts on “Bagan”
Great content! Super high-quality! Keep it up! 🙂
Awesome post! Keep up the great work! 🙂