january-2012

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