Burma Part II : Bagan

Day 3 : We have a 5am departure from our hotel to catch a flight to Bagan. This getting up in the middle of the night doesn’t make me happy but I soldier on and we take a small plane for the one hour journey.

We arrive by 8am and take a look around the local market at Nyaung Oo until we can check into our hotel and get our cycling gear on. We meet our second guide who is also the bike mechanic, get our bikes sorted and we’re off to explore the archeological zone of Bagan.

To give you a little context, Bagan was an imperial capital ruled by kings who gradually promoted Theravada Buddhism. They built many temples, monasteries, shrines and stupas and many of these are still standing today. This area is truly amazing. There are more than three thousand temples and cycling is a great way to get around and see them.

We visit Shwezigon pagoda which was built in the 11th century by the king who was the founder of the Bagan empire. It is 160ft high and 160ft wide, with four smaller stupas on each corner. Covered in gold, it is dazzlingly impressive:

While walking around the grounds we come across some Buddhist nuns:

Next is a smaller pagoda built in the 13th century called Gubyaukghi. It has many murals inside, all original.

Ananda temple is considered the most magnificent in the area and we visit that next. Commissioned in 1105, it remains the most revered temple by Burmese Buddhists. Its golden spire differentiates it from the many other temples.

It has four giant standing Buddha statues, each one facing north, south, east and west. They are carved from wood and are gold gilded. They are all different with varying mudra hand positions. A couple of the statues are remodels as they were destroyed by fires but the one pictured below is the original dating to approximately 12th century.

We do a quick “drive by” Thatbyinnyu temple, the tallest in the archeological site and a group of monks are also visiting. They seem happy enough to get a photo with us.

Next is our lunch stop and it’s a feast of small plates of traditional Burmese food – there’s fried pork, goat curry, chicken curry, fried fish and a host of vegetables and spices. It’s an interesting buffet of sorts!

Not quite ready to go back to the hotel, some of us opt for another temple visit. This one is called Patho-Htat-mya Hpaya and is really dark with very few visitors. It has a beautiful Buddha that is lit by the sun coming in through the arched temple door:

On the ride back to the hotel there are multiple stops to view more pagodas and take some photos.. we only have one day here but I think I’d easily manage two or three.

Later in the evening we visit a lacquer factory to see how they make bowls and all sorts and then we drive to a spot for sunset. Watching the sun set takes second place to chatting to some of the girls trying to sell us clothes.. in fact I kind of missEd it all together making friends with this lovely lady!

We get to relax over another delicious Thai/Burmese meal then get to bed early. Next morning we have another 5am start as we’re going in a hot air ballon… Baloons over Bagan – woo hoo, we’re very excited. It’s surprisingly chilly and we start with a cup of tea and a safety briefing before watching the ballon inflate:

Once it’s up we climb into the basket, where there’s room for sixteen people in total – eight on each side of the pilots middle “cockpit” and four in each half of the basket. we see the whole area and so many pagodas and it’s cool to see other balloons in the air too

We get dropped back to the hotel by 8:30am to officially start day 4 of our trip………