Slowly rising up the cracked brick stairs, still solid after a thousands years, in the darkened temple; stooping under the low brick archways; stepping out into the beaming Burmese sunlight, we exalted at the unimaginable bounty of beauty springing forth before us. Oh glorious majesty, thy name is Bagan! The myriad magical monuments that blossomed under the endless swirling clouds inspired such awe as to strike the heart with furious devotion to the enthralling aesthetics of the human mind and will. Gazing in unabashed wonder at the unimaginable tableau of temples that grew up before us, brick by brick, rising towards the searing brilliance of the sun, spreading out across the vast plains to the mountains beyond. Thousands of sharp-pointed temples, immaculate despite their ancient conception, bombard our contemplative complexes and surge a shiver of awe quaking through our bodies.Alas, lo these mere lofty incantations prove utterly insufficient to disclose the lustrous celestial wonder imbued in this magnificent ancient city. Let's shift: THOUSANDS of temples, people. Thousands. Over 4,000 temples were built over the last thousand years, largely in the 11th and 13th Centuries, under two particularly fervent kings. Time, wear, and a harsh earthquake in 1975 has left some 2,500 temples standing in this city only 16 square miles in size, smaller than Manhattan. Everywhere you look there are more temples. We would bike down the road and pass hundreds of temples that we'd definitely go to if there weren't even bigger and better temples to come!
Our first day in Bagan we ran into a couple of German girls, Carina and Magdalina, we had met a few times in Mandalay. It's amazing how few tourists are in Myanmar. You run into the same tourists repeatedly. In fact, we shared a flight back to Bangkok with Carina. We hired a taxi (the back of a deli-mustard-yellow Toyota pickup truck from the '80s) with another couple of women and headed for the strange site of Mount Popa! On the way we stopped in a village to use the toilet (an outhouse with a squat toilet that has a tube that disappears mysteriously into the ground below) and the family showed us how they use palm for everything: fruit, juice, wine, whiskey, sugar, tables, chairs, little baskets, their entire house! Near the thatched-palm-leaf roof supported on palm branches a huge ox walked in endless circles crushing peanuts for their oil in a giant mortar and pestle.
Mount Popa was a strange sight to see: a huge temple perched high atop a really steep flat-topped hill---very bizarre! A flat-topped, steep-sloped hill is called a butte, as I just found out on a landforms vocabulary site, and this one was particularly steep. As we climbed the 777 stairs of the hill we skirted monkey droppings on the stairs, tipping the guys with mops.
Then, surprise, MONKEYS! Sarah was thinking about buying "monkey food" packets when a monkey jumped right up on her head! As I was snapping a shot of that stunned stunning beauty another monkey jumped right up on MY head (not photographed). The view from the top was lacking due to indelible cloud cover but the whole path was lined with shrines to Nats, traditional animistic spirits, 37 all told.
On the way back pulled up a rutted gravel road to a "petrified forest" and marvelled at the cement tree stumps that we at first thought were immaculately preserved trees. Turns out that, as many things in Myanmar, the "forest" was greatly exaggerated, as only a few fragments of pretty cool chunks of rock greeted us, the lines of the grain frozen in time.
Most of our week in Bagan we spent riding bikes on bumpy roads up and down little hills ("Mountains!" Sarah insisted) but one day we hired a horsecart. Now I've always thought that horses were evil incarnate, giant mutant hell-beasts bent on crushing the skulls of the innocent but Sarah loves them so we hopped up in a covered (and comfortably cushioned) cart). Our horse's name was Santa and she seemed very nice at first, as we rode across the wretched sandy paths through the thorny scrub. Cullon, our driver, led us through endless clusters of little temples, which we occasionally demanded to explore, eventually leading us past a government-owned expensive-hotel-tower to a big temple, which we climbed. Even in the pouring rain the view is incredible. I was constantly blown away by the sheer number of these huge temples in this city!
Each individual temple is pretty amazing, too. The nextdoor temple had original Buddhist murals from the 11th Century. It's interesting how diverse the murals in different temples are, changing in colors, styles, and even religious content. Cultivated deep in the complex soils of the verdant Myanmar collective culture, Buddhas, Hindu gods, and animistic spirits intertwine in complex symbiotic relationships to dazzle the mind and eye. There's also a painted story about two bird-people lovers who are separated for one night and cry every day for the next seven years---"Romeo and Juliette," the temple caretakers all say.At many of the temples we had to fend off vendors, who are ravenous for business in the rainy season, with fewer tourists about. We did end up buying a ridiculous number of fetching paintings from skilled local artists, many of which were copies from the art on the temple walls. We got a seven-headed elephant, some happy fish, scenes from the 11th Century monarchy, temples at sunset, and more (though some are for my Uncle David and Aunt Kim, who commissioned us to buy art and handicrafts to support Myanmar artisans). At a couple of temples vendors would actually hop on bikes and follow us to the next temple to try to sell their Buddha-head statues or laquerware coasters.
We ate lunch under the corrugated aluminum roof of a little village restaurant, pinging loudly in the rain. We were talking to another tourist, the first we had seen all day, and it turns out he teaches in Bangkok and is friends with Teresa (who we stayed with in the big city) and heard through the grapevine that we had arrived. Small world! We hung out with him the next day when both he and Sarah got flat tires and I magically lost them for 2 hours after taking an inescapably blurry photo of a temple at twilight (only after I had given Sarah the only proper working bike---chivalry is not dead!).After lunch we walked around the village and saw their colorful looms and bamboo handicrafts. We didn't bring enough money to Myanmar though and you can't get any more because there are no banks US and EU have embargoes against Myanmar due to the atrocities of the despotic military regime so we had declared it a "souvenir free day" but the people were kind and welcoming anyway, showing us around their bamboo-walled homes.
When it rains it pours in the rainy season and we could always seek sanctuary in the temples but poor Santa, our pony, was left out in the torrent. The roads turned into rivers and ankle-deep puddles and Santa was so unhappy she started kicking the cart! Each time she kicked it would ring out in a thunderous boom and chunks of wood went flying! It was a little scary and we decided to walk after we saw the stream of blood running down her leg, cut from kicking.On our last day our whole Bagan experience seemed to come together. We ate our daily delicious local breakfast in the kitchen of our guesthouse, the leftovers from the extremely kind family we stayed with. We then hopped on bikes and proceeded to see nearly every local we've met in Bagan. A guy named Mumbay loved my little 4-faced Avalokiteshvara statue so much I gave it to him (he gave us pineapple smoothies and taught us weird traditional massage techniques atop a temple) and showed us how he had a silversmith turn it into a necklace. I played guitar for a kid name Lelean who sold us George Orwell's Burmese Days a few days prior, with much applause from his friends. Pupiew, who sold us the 7-headed elephant painting, later seranaded us with Burmese ballads and his animated wife smeared tanaka on Sarah's cheeks---bark paste the women use as beauty cream and sunscreen. A curly-haired Buddhist named Quality who showed us his clicker meditation counter (instead of the old-fashioned rosery beads) sold Sarah new pink sunglasses and showed us around a huge white-walled temple.
An extremely kind and charismatic fellow we met (who shall remain unnamed) even invited us to his house for lunch! We were running late but happened to run into him on the road there and he took us the entire confusing route (our plan was to ask around, the old fashioned way). His wife made us an incredible lunch: rice with tofu, watercress, potato curry, broad beans, and other Myanmar delights. We all sat around a low table on the elevated platform of their house where they eat by day and sleep by night and talked about the culture of Myanmar, among other things. Our kind host delved deep into the injustices of the government, stealing land without compensation, robbing businesses, and killing or imprisoning even minor dissidents. He teaches English at a monastery school in a village an hour away and we gave him enough money to buy 50 new books for the students (yes, he's legit). He is writing a book about the political situation in Myanmar and asked if we could have someone who was coming to Myanmar bring an audio recorder for him. Now I happened to HAVE an audio recorder on me, which I use for recording songs, and he was so happy when I gave it to him that he gave me the stone around his neck that he got from a monk who said it would bring him luck and protection. It was an incredible encounter with him and his whole family.
We saw half a dozen rainbows arching over the endless fields of towering magestic temples in the week we were in Bagan. We'll never forget it.
More pictures from this magical ancient city: http://www.face
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