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I did Bagan alone as my fellow travellers were either too tired to look at another temple (had my sympathy) or decided to travel in the searing sun along the shadeless ass-shatteringly bumpy roads by bicycle (had my pity) rather than join me in my horse and buggy.
It would take several thousand words to describe Bagan (in fact, some French scholar wrote a seven volume description of the place) so I'll post several thousand words worth of pictures.
I started the day at 6am for a leisurely breakfast and have a bit of a read about Bagan. It seems that the city was built over a period of 230 years from AD1057 until Kublai Khan dropped in for dinner. Even so, much of the city must have been used after that because many of the paintings in the temples are only a few hundred years old and some depict Kublai Khan as a not very nice person. There was a city for a few hundred years before 1057 as well, but that was when the king got religion and decided to show Buddha good guy he was by working tens of thousands of slave to death building temples
and stupas.
A bit more reading later and I realized that seeing the whole of Bagan wasn't really going to happen. At one time there were about 4,000 temples and countless stupas which, through desecration, the elements, and earthquakes, were reduced to about 2,000 ruins, many of which have since been repaired.
I hired a horse, buggy, and driver for the day (USD4) to get to old Bagan and have a look around. Old Bagan is where most of the temples are and where the last residents lived until 1990 when the government decided they should move out of the way of tourists and shipped them to New Bagan to make way for hotels and resorts. Naturally, the residents received the standard compensation from this caring sharing goverment; they were moved to a peanut farm, after all. Aung Sung Suu Kyi seems to have a point.
The morning was pretty slow. Actually, the whole day was slow. The horse that I had was probably the slowest trotter in the world - he would trot just above a fast walk and Soso, my driver, had to keep slapping him with the reins to stop him slowing to a
Htilominlo Temple
Just cause I can spell it doesn't mean I can pronounce it!walk. He (the horse) also farted every 15 seconds or so. I reckon if you put a cork in his arse he would blow up like a balloon in only a few minutes.
The temples were pretty special, despite my cynacism about organized religion and working slaves to death. I couldn't help but imagine what an amazing city it must have been, given that the 4,000 temples would have been surrounded by wooden buildings and run by tens of thousands of monks. Now that would be a sight: 10,000 monks walking past with their begging bowls.
Inside they all had their Buddha statues and images which all blur into one after, for me, the first one. The views were good though, from the temples intact enough to climb up.
Climbing up the temples isn't for the faint-hearted. The steps are about a foot high and often less than six inches deep, giving a gradient of around 60 degrees. That would be bad even on even stairs without cracks, chips and missing bits. The worst one that I climbed had an internal passageway exactly half an inch narrower than my shoulders, headroom for a lad, and zero lighting.
A great big temple
This one has steps about a foot up and six inches deep. Climbing is not for the faint-hearted. It was more like spelunking than touring historic ruins.
One could never get lost here. I tried. Took my driver down some small dirt track for a few km and got out and walked down a path to have a look at some ruins. About five minutes after arriving a woman came up with her daughter to open the front door for me. I must have been the only visitor that week, but they are keen to do their job (look after the temple and open it for visitors), keep visitors happy, and sell the inevitable goodies they bring out at the end of the short tour. I didn't really want anything, but ended up with about 40 postcards an several laquerware bowls. The major temples had souvenir shops set up permanently at the entrances, and one even had a pretty good sized shop right inside with the Buddhas!
I joined Inbar and Magdalena for lunch (they were cycling around, poor things) and had a look at the remainder of the major temples before heading to a rooftop to watch the sunset. I'm told it is truly wonderful when there are no clouds.
I joined up with
Gawdawpaun Temple
This 12th century square thing is one of the largest in Bagan, but access to the upper stories is limited because of the damage in the 1975 earthquake. two other travellers for dinner and we convinced the puppet masters to put on a free puppet display. We all felt a bit guilty because we only watched it for five minutes and basically ignored the remaining 40 minutes, except to fill the silences with guilt-laden applause.
During dinner I decided that I was templed out. This was the first time I've been wandering around temples since Anchor Wat (which is better) and probably the last time until I get to South America.
It was wonderful. I would recommend it. I wouldn't have missed it. I won't do it again.
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