September 10, 2007

Bagan (MYANMAR)

Touring the Oft-Overlooked Temples of Bagan

BAGAN PHOTO GALLERY

Our over-night bus from Mandalay arrived in Bagan at 4am this morning, and as I described in yesterday's post, it was impossible to get any sleep on the journey. Groggy-eyed and in need of a place to crash, Jo and I stumbled along the still-dark streets of Bagan in search of a hostel for the night. We were dropped off in the Nyuang U district, which is where most of the budget accommodation is located, so despite it being off-season there was no dearth of options. We settled into a quiet room on the second floor of the May Kha Lar Gust House, and passed out within seconds.

I barely made it through one cycle of REM sleep because our alarm went off at half past eight. Today was to be our big day of exploring Bagan's temples, and there wasn't room in our crazy Myanmar schedule to have a lie in. We charged our batteries with two pots of coffee and a full breakfast before the kind Ms Cho (owner of the guest house) drew out a detailed map for seeing the temples. We also used her to make two airline reservations to Yangon for the following afternoon. It is scary to think we will be leaving Myanmar in just 48 hours.

The typical means of transport to see the temples, excepting those who have the luxury of 'vacationing' rather than 'traveling', is to hire a horse-cart for the day. With over-night buses full of rice sacks we definitely don't fall under the 'vacationing' category, so a horse-cart it was. Our driver, Ahmey, is a 22-year old university student who speaks great English and loves Western music. Our horse, Rambo, wanted to go his own way for the first hour, but for the remainder of the day he demonstrated he was lacking none of the bravado of his namesake, Silvestre Stallone.

There is no easy way to re-cap the fifteen temples we stopped to visit throughout the day, so I will instead give a quick history of the temples and point out the photo gallery will give the best idea of what we saw for the day...

The scenery of Bagan is composed of over 3000 temples dotting a 42-sq-mile flat landscape just east of the Ayayarwady River. The best way to visualize what this means is to imagine "all the medieval cathedrals of Europe sitting on Manhattan Island". The temples rival Angkor Wat in terms of size, history, and potential for mind-blowing awe. The more impressive temples mix Hindu styles from India with localized Buddhist imagery. Bagan entered its golden era with the conquest of Thaton in AD 1057 and became one of the strongest powers in all of southeast Asia. It was over the next 200 years that over 4,400 temples were built (it was over-run by the Mongols of Kublai Khan in 1287).

Just so this post isn't lacking in the normal personal recount (I understand a photo gallery isn't much in the way of a travel journal), I will add a few personal touches - basically things that stick out in my mind from the long day of touring. I must start with how annoying it was to take off my shoes at every temple we came across. Although the floor was far cleaner than what we found in Yangon, it was still a nuisance, and in several of the temples there were bat droppings covering the floor. Something else that sticks out in my mind were all the vendors who wanted to sell us something. I understand it is off-season and money is hard to come by, but we were hit with the same tactics on the way into every temple and on the way out. Fortunately, the Burmese people are unconditional in their kindness and the vendors were never aggressive, but it was tiring to deal with nonetheless.

The last thing that sticks out in my mind were all the large sculptures of Buddha. I cannot begin to count how many we must have seen, but it got to the point where we would skip rooms just because staring at another 15m gold Buddha lost all sense of uniqueness. I do not mean to take away from the sanctity of what I saw, but it was a long, hot day and oftentimes it felt somewhat redundant.

Finally, I must say the sunset views over Bagan make visiting Myanmar worth anyone's while. The sun danced across the green and sand colored landscape with the shadows of the temples growing in stature as the sun descended. It was really a sight to behold.

When we reached the guest house it was already 9:30pm, meaning we spent a full 12 hours of touring. This would be an exhausting day for anyone, but add in a night of minimal sleep on a dilapidated bus, endless bouncing from riding a horse-cart on dirt roads, and climbing up and down temples, and we were understandably wiped out. Nonetheless, we charted a taxi for the following day so we could visit the divine Mt Popa, and picked up our afternoon plane ticket for Yangon.