Biking in Bagan
Trip Start
Sep 01, 2005
1
161
163
Trip End
Dec 04, 2006
Bagan,
Myanmar
Monday, November 6, 2006
Capital city of the first Myanmar Kingdom, the site measures 13 by 8 km and contains more than 2500 Buddhist monuments (temples, stupas, monasteries, etc) built from the 10th to the 14th centuries AD. Several of these monuments are still highly venerated by the population, and attract numerous pilgrims and devotees from all over the country, particularly at festival times. Other are in various states of conservation and maintenance. The large corpus of contemporary stone inscriptions have been the most reliable source for the history of the Kingdom. The mural paintings inside more than 300 temples constitutes a unique corpus of paintings of that time in southeast Asia.
For the recovery day we decided to bike our way to the market and also to one of the pagodas for sunset. We misjudged our ability and sped through the Old Bagan Archaeological area and made our way almost to New Bagan which was a good 20 kilometres away. A change of plans was in order and we rode back stopping first off at a bottle shop for some beers and then second to the river side to watch the sunset over the river. The kids that hung out there were very friendly and inquisitive and the four of us held separate conversations with all the school kids who had questions coming left, right and centre. The conversations would be halted from time to time with a shout from one of us to stop a kid who was about to throw a rock at the sea snake that swam past several times. An uncle of one of the kids had some sand paintings which we admired until there was not enough light so we continued back to his house to look at how he made the sand paintings. The brief introduction to the family was followed immediately after by a power shortage (quite common in Myanmar) so we resorted to candles and a battery operated light.
We thanked him for his time and hospitality and bid him and his family farewell and made our way back along darkened streets and returned for our Indian rendezvous at Aroma 2 Restaurant where they served unlimited curries and chapattis on a big banana leaf...yum!
