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MAURITIUS. LONGBEACHMAURITIUS.COM MET RES TO AN UND ER WATE R WALK
IMAGES©CORBISAXIOM Old Bagan is a deserted, overgrown city seemingly built entirely of pagodas, a landscape of trees, goats and huge, otherworldly buildings the height of Burma’s power it is estimated that there may have been over 5,000 pagodas and temples in Bagan, but many were destroyed in 1287 when the empire fell to Kublai Khan. Even more may have succumbed to the changing course of the Irrawaddy. Even so, today Bagan is all pagodas. Since only religious buildings were made of stone, only they remain. Everything else is gone; all the houses, shops and palaces have been eaten up by the forest. Bagan is a strange landscape of trees, goats and these huge, otherworldly buildings. A traditional teak ferryboat transferred me to Th e Road to Mandalay, a gracious old river-cruiser named after Kipling’s poem. It sat there at anchor, low and white in the middle of the Irrawaddy. Black smoke rose from the ship’s antiquated funnels but inside it was a fl oating fi ve-star hotel with a swimming pool on the top deck. Th e Road to Mandalay is operated by Orient Express, and my cabin had a writing desk facing the river, a brand new bed, exemplary room service and the best air-conditioning in all Burma. Th e roads in Bagan are rudimentary, just red sandy tracks through the dense foliage. Th e best way to explore is by slow horse-drawn carriage or bicycle. After lunch on deck I joined a party of cyclists from the ship heading off to get a proper look at all those temples and pagodas. Th ey are invariably dark, four-sided ambulatories structured around four golden statues of the Buddha, some reaching 10m tall. In their cool corridors we could rest and wipe the perspiration from our brows. We were also free to explore the hundreds of recesses where smaller statues illustrate incidents from the Buddha’s many incarnations. Th e only thing you must never do is sit with the soles of your feet facing a statue of the Buddha. Th e Burmese are the gentlest of souls and keep a respectful distance from visitors, but on the one occasion when, overcome by the heat, I made this monumental faux pas I was amazed at how quickly people appeared to ask me to please point my feet in another direction. Th e diff erence between a temple and a pagoda in Burma is simple. Pagodas are solid, towering structures – often covered in gold leaf – that may contain a holy relic but are not to be entered. Temples are for prayer and worship. Th e great advantage of some pagodas is that they can be climbed. I did this at the Buledi Pagoda, up terrifyingly steep steps that were cut into the outside of this square, tall structure. Th e view from the top was stunning. As far as the eye could see, pagodas and temples rose up in the light of the setting sun. At the end of the day we found ourselves at Hsin Phyushin, where we found a rare example of how people lived in Bagan Seventy-Three Previous page: the temples and pagodas of Bagan are best seen by balloon. Left: young monks among Bagan’s ancient stones. Below: the banks of the Irrawaddy are a landscape untouched by modernity
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WINTER 2012 THE MAGAZINE
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january-2012

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