Myanmar - The City of four Million Pagodas...

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February 5th 2007

Published: February 5th 2007

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Chi

Sunrise

Mystical Sunrise

I am someone who is not too interested in animals or nature, I am much more into people and their lifes and stories, and I am interested in people and their achievements - like ancient archaeological sites as achievements of past generations and cultures. They show us what mankind is capable of.

In Southeast Asia there are - in my personal opinion - a handful of worldclass archaeological sites which are an aboslutely must for everyone who is interested in ancient cultures, history and ruins: Unrivaled Angkor in Cambodia, Sukhothai in Thailand, Borobudur in Indonesia and Bagan in Myanmar, dubbed „the city of four million pagodas“ even though there are just about 4200.

I have seen the first two on my last journeys to Southeast Asia and the latter two are on my list for this time and hopefully gonna be one of the highlights of my journey.

- Bagan -

I was actually planning to go to Mandalay from Inle Lake, but as I spent too much time in Yangon and Nyaung Shwe I found myself on a tight schedule, so that I decided to skip Mandalay as some people told me that the city itself

Bagan

Sunrise

is not so interesting, it’s much more the small villages around Mandalay which are of interest. So that Mandalay and the surrounding villages would require several days to explore. In addition Mandalay is a kind of springboard to destinations in Northern Myanmar, like some remoted villages off the beaten track. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to go there as my priority was Bagan - the ancient city.

I left Nyaung Shwe early in the morning at 5:00AM by bus and arrived in Bagan about 10hours later. I was surprised to be the only tourist on the bus as there is only one bus going to Bagan per day. I think most travellers decided to take a plane dreading the busride on bumpy roads.

I almost missed my bus as the guy at the reception forgot to wake me up at 4:00AM so that my preordered taxi driver had to knock on my door to wake me up at 4:30AM. The problem was that there was no electricity and I was too lazy to pack my stuff the evening before so that I had no choice but to pack my backpack in the dark, trying hard not to

Sunrise Bagan

leave anything behind. Fortunately, I managed to get all my belongings into my bags and in additon I accidantally took the room key with me, which I still have now, somewhere here in Hamburg in one of my drawers. Maybe one day I will have the chance to return it, but I guess that by then they won’t need it anymore.

As soon we left the Shan Plateau and passed the mountains the weather changed immediately, it was raining heavily in Nyaung Shwe but the sky cleared up as farther we got away. I am always surprised how quickly the climate can change out of the sudden just by passing through a mountain range or a different landscape.

The busride was scenic but I was sleeping most of the time, I am lucky that I can easily sleep on moving vehicles what makes travelling a way easier.

When I got off the bus several touts approached me but I succesfully denied their requests to follow them to their guesthouses. I decided to crab my backpack and started to walk aimlessly through the city. After a bit more than just 5 minutes I felt totally exhausted and my

Burmese Girl

Thannaka

legs and feet were burning like hell. At this moment I realized that I was so fu..king out of shape that I must do something about that. First of all I have to admit that I was a kind of chubby back then and secondly I had so little stamina that I would end up totally done after a few hundred meters of walking with a 14kg heavy backpack on my back. But now, while I am writing this, I weight about 13kg (28lbs) less and am, believe me or not, in a much better shape than an half year ago in Southeast Asia. Anyway, somehow I managed to find and get my chubby self to an decent guesthouse, even though I needed like an hour of rest before I could move a single part of my body again. :-)

So, I finally made it to Bagan, ready to venture into the ancient temples and ruins.

Bagan founded as early as in 849 on the banks of the Ayeyarwaddy river about 500 km north of Yangon. Bagan was the capital of todays Myanmar, whose area of dominance had roughly the extent of the present Burmese state. The 10th

Baloon

over Bagan

century archaeological site is considered one of the richest and most amazing site in Southeast Asia, comparable to the sites like Angkor and Borobudur. Remain virtually unknown, this once splendid and glorious capital of the First Myanmar Empire, is now a 42 square km area dotted with thousands of ancient pagodas, stupas, shrines, ordination halls and monuments.

It is definitely one of the richest archaeological sites with originally more than 13,000 temples once stood and some 2200 monuments still standing and another 2000 in ruins. Time, man and nature, particularly earthquakes, have taken their toll but the most important monuments have been restored to their original grandeur. Some were destroyed by invaders, others by earthquake and decay. Bagan's peak time coincided with Myanmar's architectural peak time in 1044 with King Anawratha's ascension to the throne. Only one year after King Anawratha's conversion to Buddhism in 1056 by a Mon monk, Shin Arahan, he went to war against the Mon town of Thaton to gain possession of holy Buddhist scripts, the Tripitaka. The holy Buddhist scripts were not the only trophies gained from the war the Burmese army took some 30,000 Mons prisoners of war to Bagan, among them numerous

Sunrise

over Bagan

craftsmen and artisans, who in following decades not only enriched, but even determined, Bagan's culture. The Pagodas of the following period were almost exclusively built in Mon style. In 1287 hordes of Mongolian horsemen under Kublai Khan conquered Bagan.

The towns, at least the wooden, secular buildings, were mostly burnt down. Soon after, the realm of Bagan disintegrated into many, smaller kingdoms and fiefdoms. In 1975 a strong earthquake damaged and destroyed many smaller temples and even a number of large and massively built temples and pagodas were harmed.

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed at 4:30AM in the morning to watch the sunrise at the ruins. I rented a horse-cart driver for taking me to and around Old Bagan. It was nice to ride through the night watching the temples reflecting the pale moonlight and listen to the birds singing their songs while the rest of the world was still asleep and covered under a coat of silence.

My horse-cart driver brought me to one of the numerous temples and showed me the way how to climb it to the top level by myself. It felt a bit strange to walk barefeet through

Boy

who said he gots 5 eyes!

the narrow corridors of the temple just with a small flashlight in my hand, step by step through the dark, taking hundreds of years old and narrow stairways, higher and higher until I finally reached the top level. From there I could overview a part of ancient Bagan and numerous temples, including some big ones. In the distance I could spot some shadows moving around on some of them, and it looked like they were a kind of packed with people. But the one I had climbed was rather a mid sized one, and not one of the famous ones, so that I had the luck to have it all just for myself, standing alone on the top of a ancient temple.

While sitting on the top of that temple waiting for the sun to crawl over the horizon to start the day and to put an end to the night, I was lighting up a cigarette with my greenblue lighter and blew a puff of smoke into the air. While watching the smoke rising slowly up towards the sky I was thinking of nothing, nothing at all, there was just the temple and me and the silent world

Little Burmese Girl

with Thannaka

around. I love to see how the smoke of my cigarette dissolves in the air, it's like so many other things in life, like people and faces you meet along your path, who sooner or later will head towards different directions, before most of them finally dissolve out of existence, because everything in life, every single moment of it is in a way transient, transient like a puff of smoke in the air.

The sunrise in Balgan illuminate a host of pagoda spires that look like rosebuds rising from a caramel sea. When the sun finally rose up I had the chance to take the pics I wanted. I ended up taking like 40-50pics of the sunrise. Some few of them you can see on this page.

I spent the rest of the day riding through Old Bagan on my horse-cart what was fun, after an half dozen of temples I was sick off temples and ruins and just took a nap in one of them or sat on another one just for reading a book or listening to some music while watching the people passing by.

Bagan is the most touristic destination in Myanmar, but I

Little Monk

with his lunch

loved the city. It has some pretty nice restaurants for dining out, nicely decorated with a cozy atmosphere and all of them have a wide range of different dishes on their menu to make a glutton like me a happy boy. I ended up spoiling myself with loads of Indian, Chinese and Burmese food and all kinds of delicious fruit shakes. It kind of reminded me on my trip to India and Nepal, as soon I crossed the border from India to Nepal and reached Pokhara, the restaurants and food was just a huge difference to what they could offer me in India before. Not only the food but the whole atmosphere was different. In a way you feel like in heaven, at least when it comes to dining out, food, service and stuff like that. So, Bagan is the right place to relax and to enjoy what life can offer you after some days of hard travelling and basic food - so life is good in Bagan.

The temples and ruins are nice, not impressive but nice as there are so many of them. The next day I rented a bicycle and rode around the area, the weather

Little Monk

showing me his lunch

was hot and a way better than in Nyaung Shwe, so I stopped whenever I felt like and had a drink here and there, something to eat now and then and a chat with fellow travellers from time to time.
I noticed that the kids in Bagan have very pretty Thanakas, a pale yellow paste which is considered as the beauty secret of Burmese people to protect their faces from sun and heat. The paste is made by grinding bark of the Thanaka tree on a circular smooth stone slab and mixing with water. Some put circles on their cheeks with the paste, others put stripes or coat their whole face. The kids in Bagan had some of the prettiest Thanakas I have seen so far in Myanmar.

I was glad that I made the decision to skip Mandalay to have some more time for Bagan, it was definitely the highlight of my Myanmar trip.

As I was flying back to Bangkok in a few days, I headed back south towards Yangon. The busride took me 15hours on some really bad roads, but that’s Myanmar and I am glad that it wasn’t rainy season, what would have made

In the Shades

woman having a rest

the condition of the roads even worser.

In Yangon I stayed at Motherlands again, spoiling myself once more with an airconditioned doubleroom with a bed just for my backpack. Spent the last day walking around a bit in town and resting and of course loads of food and fruit shakes.

It's interesting to return to the starting point of your journey, last time I was the one who has just arrived and ready to venture into the country to explore its secrets, and asking other travellers about their experience and inside tips. This time I was the one who returned and the one who was answering questions by new travellers to Myanmar. It’s actually like a loop or circle, or how some people would call it: The circle of life… ok ok, probably not the great circle, but maybe a small one… :-)

To be continued… next: Malaysia - The Garden City of Ligths...

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