Bagan – Myanmar

We really liked Yangon, loved Inle Lake but we absolutely adored Bagan! We’d go as far as to say it was our favourite place we’ve ever been! Bagan is basically a sandy plane carpeted with thousands of buddhist temples. In the 11th and 13th century, Bagan used to be the thriving capital city of Burma before the Mongol invasion. Unfortunately, an earthquake hit the area in 2016 damaging many of the temples so some were closed for restoration. We couldn’t help but wonder how incredible it must have been last year when none of the temples had bamboo scaffolding structures to help support the ruins. Still, we are so lucky we had the opportunity to go; apparently within a year, all the temples will be closed. Tourists will still be able to drive round, just not climb up them (which was half the fun!).

We arrived in Bagan at 4am on another overnight bus and again we decided to power through the day as we were close to sunrise. We rented E-bikes (electric mopeds) which are the only form of transport in Bagan. I can’t drive so I always find mopeds a little terrifying, more because I’m not accustomed to being responsible on an actual road.  The helmets provided were rubbish and mine flew off in the wind. The main roads themselves were okay, a good few pot holes, but fairly decent. The sandy off-road paths however, were a different story. The E-bikes would often slip so we had to go really slow, like 10kmph slow. We drove to a main temple for the sunrise and discovered that you had to take your shoes and socks off before climbing all temples. Normally I have no problem with this but when you’re climbing crumbling steps with rubble strewn across the floor, it’s a little uncomfortable to say the least. The barefoot element also meant it was better to explore temples early in the morning or late in the afternoon as temperatures reached 40 degrees which made the stone unbearable to stand on around midday. Our first sunrise was absolutely spectacular. As we’d arrived in the middle of the night, we hadn’t really seen any temples other than vague silhouettes in the dark as we drove along on our mopeds. We were stunned when the sun finally rose to reveal such an incredible landscape; abandoned yet so grand. Bagan is also infamous for all the hot air balloons that are released at sunrise. Though I’m sure it would have been amazing, ballooning was too expensive for us, we hope we’ll come back one day and do it.  We just spent hours driving along with no real aim or direction and stopping to look around these incredible ruins. On our first evening, we decided to go for a change of scenery and found an abandoned temple overlooking the Irrawaddy river; we were the only ones there and it felt like we were the only people in the whole world.

On the second morning, we set the alarm for 5am, apparently Dave said I had a full conversation with him saying that I was too tired and that he should go see the sun rise alone, I am still adamant that I was talking in my sleep and he didn’t wake me up. Fortunately Dave said I didn’t miss out on much as it was so cloudy and windy that morning that no hot air balloons even went up.   Turns out I also had bad food poisoning so perhaps a blessing in disguise that I didn’t go out. There’s a horrific story there but one that is not appropriate for the internet – ask me in person one day. I managed to settle my stomach by late afternoon so we still had a good few hours exploring and managed to watch the sunset. We went to find a temple view for the sunset this time. As we pulled over to consult our maps for a good sunset spot, two little girls came over and pointed us in the direction of a good view point temple that we could climb. We followed their directions and found a beautiful spot. The two girls later joined us at the top. One was 12 and her younger sister only 6. They were so adorable and spoke incredible English. I was powerless to their charm and bought a painting of two monks painted by her older sister (couldn’t even face haggling with her and just accepted her first price – only £3). I was happy to hear she learned her English at school and aspired to be a Bagan tour guide one day, her little sister wanted to grow up to be an English teacher.

On our final day in Bagan, we got up very early to another beautiful sunrise. We spent the morning exploring the last areas we wanted to go and ended with our favourite temple we’d found. It was a little bit different because it was more grand than other temples; it had a courtyard leading up to it and the temple itself had intricate carvings and stone gargoyles. It also had 4 massive intact Buddhas on the inside (normally there’s only one big one) and though one of the stairwells advised no entry, we found another one that we were able to climb to find an incredible view. As with so many of the temples, we were the only ones there! On our way back to the homestay; I accidentally ran the only red light in Bagan…I just didn’t see it. Oops! All ok though. According to our E-bikes we’d driven over 130km by the end of our stay!

That afternoon, we hopped on a 5 hour bus to Mandalay for our last few days in Myanmar. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you much about Mandalay because we’ve spent most of our time in the room. We’ve been really unfortunate with food poisoning in Myanmar! We think my food poisoning is still from Bagan, but Dave also managed to get it here from something we ate and ended up projectile vomiting again. Oh well! At least we’ve had some rest and recovery days and will hopefully be fighting fit for next week in Chiang Mai, Thailand!

Thanks for reading!

Sophie & Dave