On the evening of day 5 we flew into Bagan, getting a decent view of the area from the sky, before checking into our hotel and finding an incredible view from our 2nd floor balcony and from the swimming pool. The view is important because, well, the view is incredible. Around a thousand years ago Bagan was the capital of a country that stretched to much of South-east Asia for over 200 years before Ghengis Khan and his Mongols arrived. During that time, in addition to the trade, living and government buildings that were constructed out of wood and have now disappeared, 4,400 temples, pagodas and the like were built. 2,200 still stand today in an area around 4 miles by 4 miles.
It is incredible. There is no other appropriate word. The Plain is just full of temples, over 100 of which are worth stopping and looking at, many of them have impressive interiors of murals in addition to their amazing structures. In between locals continue farming as they have done for centuries and trees dot the landscape. The Irawaddy river that is the heart of the country runs around 2 sides of the area adding to the backdrop. Even the persistent hawkers trying to sell their paintings and artefacts at most of the well-known sights are unable to distract from the experience.
Cycling around the Plain and exploring the temples along tiny tracks, climbing up to the top of many of the temples to see extraordinary views, taking photos of the incredible view; it was one hell of a few days, and one well worth seeing. Our fantastic (and cheap) hotel, the Kumudara, with balcony and pool views directly over the temples added to the atmosphere. The only dampeners so far was the rain on the first night, the clouds that suddenly appeared on the second and third nights to ruin our sunset views, and several flat tyres!
For two mornings we went for a run over the fields, along tracks and past the temples (and often rather startled farmers). Each day we climbed up several temples to take in the amazing views. We sweated a lot in the heat, drank a lot, and visited lots of temples. On the last night we even went for an evening swim under the stars -as I have noted before I only seem to see the stars every 6 months or so which is quite sad. On the whole Bagan was up there, close to Angkor Wat (though different) as one of the highlights of Asia.
The Burmese seem to be halfway to being Indian, but are certainly not Indian. Their simple food of meet curry and rice is often eaten with cutlery and they don't seem to care much about their political situation, somewhat resigned to fate (elections this year, the first for 20 years since the military junta lost but refused to give up power, will just cement their position behind a pretence of being elected since the opposition leader is barred from running and her party highly restricted) after the failed uprisings last year. The Indians of course eat with their hands and often eat Nan bread with their meal; they also always have lively opinions on politics. Everything here was fairly clean, even the streets of Yangon, and certainly there were few cows to be seen-just lots of dogs. The Burmese tend to give more direct confirmations in response to questions than the Indians, although like the Indians they do love to provide stories or answers without any point. I tried to find out why none of the trees at Bagan seemed more than a few decades old and, ten minutes of discussion later, think maybe it is because the farmers cut them all down to use as wood and to make space for farming - once the area became protected in 1990 maybe some trees were planted along fields or roads or just grew naturally.
After leaving Bagan we flew (the roads are so bad even a car would take ten hours) to Heho which required flying two sides of a triangle, one about 20 min (my shortest flights ever I believe), the other 35 min, and just a short wait on the plane in the middle as some passengers got of and others got on. A great deal quicker than a bus! From the plane it was clear how sparsely inhabited the country is and how rare tarmac is!
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