Temples Temples Everywhere / A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!

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Arriving anywhere at 4 in the morning is unlikely to appeal to most people, but add in the fact that the only form of transportation available is straight out of Steptoe & Son and even I was having some doubts. With our bags safely loaded onto the back of our trusty steed the second disadvantage of arriving in the middle of the night dawned on me, namely the impossibility of getting your bearings in a new town, particularly one lacking in street lights. Still, with our alternatives limited to walking around with a woefully inefficient torch, the horse and cart seemed like a good idea.
It turns out that this is also the best way of visiting the sights of Bagan, as many of the roads are at least 75% sand, at least that is what the driver told us when he convinced us to meet him later on for a tour. Thankfully, he was bang on the money, and it was also unbelievably hot when we awoke from our slumbers some 4 hours later, and we were glad of the shade provided by the makeshift awning on the back of the cart. In fact Bagan was the hottest place we have been for quite some time, 38 in the shade at one point.

Bagan was once the capital city of one of the many kingdoms and empires that at various times in the past occupied what is now Myanmar. One thousand years ago, when much of the population of England was living in mud huts, banging their heads together to make fire and generally wishing the Romans would come back, a diverse and rich city was thriving in Bagan. As with the former Angkor Empire of Indochina, the rulers of Bagan chose to show their wealth and power by constructing a number of temples. In fact, there are more temples in an area only slightly larger than Bournemouth, than there are cathedrals in the whole of Western Europe. At its height Bagan was home to over 4000 temples of various sizes and styles. Age, weather and a 1975 earthquake have sadly accounted for around half, but that still leaves over 2000 temples in 20sq miles. It is a magical sight.

Although the individual temples of Bagan cannot match their Angkorean cousins in terms of size or majesty, it is the sheer number of spires, stupas and zedis that makes Bagan so impressive. From atop one of the temples in the nearby village of Nyaung U the scale of the site is obvious, wherever you look there are rust-red spires protruding from the scorched earth. Sometimes no more than 10m apart the sea of temples continues to the horizon in all directions. We spent all of the first day with Harold and Hercules, trotting around the area known as Old Bagan, seeing countless temples and having our first true Burmese culinary experience in the form of a buffet lunch. There is no menu, rather a fixed price per person, and a selection of small dishes are brought to the table. I counted 13 in total, and as soon as one is empty it is refilled, a fact we didn’t realise at first and would later regret when we could hardly move at the end of the meal. It was delicious and unbelievable value at around $3.50 each. Yet again we were grateful for the horse and cart to carry our bloated bodies back to the hotel.

In total we spent 4 days in Bagan, including a trip to nearby Mount Popa, the Buddhist Mount Olympus, a trip to a sugar palm plant where all manner of sugary delights are processed (including some sugar palm moonshine which we sampled at 8.30am!) and a day spent in the village of Nyaung U sipping tea and watching the wonderful world that is Myanmar go slowly by.

I think the photos tell the story better than I can.

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