Bagan Temples

20.01.2015 - 20.01.2015 32 °C

After lunch, we were off on bikes to explore Bagan, a temple wonderland. This was largest concentration of Buddhist temples, stupas, payas and ruins in the world, many dating from the 11th to 13th centuries. Bagan's history began in the 9th century, but massive temple construction began in 1044 with King Anawratha founding the Bagan Empire. He'd been influenced by the Mon with regards to both the script and Theravada Buddhist religion. At one time there were an estimated 10,000 structures but today there are approximately 2,200. Many were damaged in an earthquake in 1975 and some restored in 1990, but not always to historical accuracy.

Not even five minutes past our guesthouse, down a flat dusty road, we found several temples. The structures weren't huge, but they were quite relaxed to visit given the lower number of visitors. A few vendors wanted to give their painting sales pitches and tell us about the temples. They had been damaged by smoke during the war as well as in the earthquake. Golden or red robed Buddha statues sat behind old brickwork. There were staircases up to the top to see the view of just how far the temples extended. For miles there were big, small, golden or red bricked pagodas populating the plains.

The next paya, Tha Kya Bon, had a statue that the vendor called the grandfather Buddha. The second head poked out of the main Buddha's stomach and had been built in the 11th century while the larger Buddha that encased it was built in the 13th century.
Further back, there were more rectangular buildings from the same reddish bricks. Trees with purple flowers grew nearby. The overall vegetation was fairly sparse in terms of groundcover, just small bushes and a few trees, almost desert-like.

We rested back in the room to ease our stomachs and beat the heat. We got a free map and figured out a good sunset temple.

On the ride back out to the temples, we found a few more temples to explore including Htilominlo, meaning 'Blessings of Three Worlds', which was large and impressive. It was the last temple known to be built in the Myanmar style. The temple was erected because on this spot King Nantaungmya was selected from among his five brothers to become the crown prince. We wandered around inside where old faded paintings lined the arched ceilings and walls. There were sitting and standing, also old and newer gold Buddha statues.

This temple had a staircase to the top to view the pagoda landscape as well.

Some of the vendor's offered to take us to a photo area for a fee, but the best photos were from a further distance so we declined, sneaked our bikes around the outside wall and walked to an area where we could get our own shots.

We continued to U-Pali-Thein which was a single level rectangular gray building that was gated off but there were old paintings inside on the arched ceilings of Buddhas and other motifs.

We biked down to Buledi temple after failing to reach the further ones. We scaled the steps to join the growing crowd of observers for sunset.

There were some clouds but the colour still came through quite well. There were plenty of other temples around to liven up the sunset shots and create silhouettes at times. A sleepy dog managed to climb up a few levels of the temple and joined us. There were less hawkers now than during my last visit when people offered cold drinks to bring up to the top and post cards. They had some clothing at the bottom with the large pile of tourist shoes as we had to leave them out of respect. The sun sneaked below the horizon dozens of temples and stupas in the distance.

Our return cycle was in the dark down a dusty road that could be a bit too soft and sandy at times. At least there wasn't a parade of horse carriages to pass on the way, another popular form of tourist transportation out here. We popped back on the main road at the rental shop. It was quite nice considering how exhausted we were.

At supper, I was feeling quite awful so after staring at the menu for far too long, I just went back to the room to sleep under the heavy blankets. Ryan finally got to try his local Star Cola and had a chicken burger from the place where we'd rented our bikes.