Bagan is the ancient capital of this region. Before it was known as Myanmar. Before it was known as Burma.
The ruler at that time, King Anawratha had recently shifted over to the Theravada school of Buddhism, and wanted in no uncertain terms to ensure that his subjects weren’t lacking for places of worship. He proceeded to build over 800 (yes, Eight Hundred!!!) temples in the kingdom of Bagan.

I dont know how many of them are actually visited to be prayed at, but it makes for a great tourist attraction! So much so that the Burmese government decided to kick out every single villager that lived here to make it into a ‘protected heritage site’. You see the 800 temples were built centuries ago. In the middle of his kingdom. And over time, people settled there. Living amidst the temples. All was well till the 2000s. Then, the government decided to open up the borders for tourists to come through. It knew that Bagan would be the number one spot to go visit. And, it was a dictatorship. i.e. free reign to do whatever, whenever. So what would a military dictatorship that needs money to fund its weapons and BMWs do when a potential goldmine of Tourist dollars is in the offing. Why, kick out everyone, add lawns, beautify it and turn it into a heritage park of course! Was there interest in preserving a natural heritage that might otherwise have been ruined faster with people living amidst it? Sure. Was that the primary motivation behind it? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

That was one reason this place was not my favorite. The other reason was that, in all of Myanmar, Bagan was the only place where I felt that more locals than average were initiating conversation for the purposes of extracting money from me. In most parts of Myanmar, so few foreigners had gone through there that most folks were excited, interested, and curious to see you. Not so in Bagan. Being the #1 tourism spot, enough tourists had come through, possibly enough rude tourists that this place was starting to slide. For these reasons, Bagan ended up being my least favorite place in Myanmar.

I’ll get off my soapbox now, and tell you about the good stuff that we experienced…

Sunrise. Rather, an hour before sunrise. Jodee and I get up grumpily to the gentle bell of the all-too-familiar alarm clock. Watching the sun come up over the Pagodas in Bagan is the thing to do here. Well, it’s one of the only 3 things to do here. The other 2 being watching the Sun set over the Pagodas, and watching the Pagodas themselves.
The previous day, since I’d taken ill as a result of the jolting bus ride and a jolting chicken curry, Jodee had arranged 2 e-Bikes for us, to take us to one of the 3 Pagodas from which to watch the sunrise.

What is an e-Bike you ask? Well, its a Chinese invention (I think, given the copious chinese writing all over the bike and instrument panel). An incredibly unstable two-wheeler with very tiny wheels and a tinier seat. It’s powered by a tiny motor that I can veritably hear praying for flat land, for it falters at the tiniest hint of an incline. At full throttle it goes about as fast as a jogger on a sunday. But all said and done, it gets you from A-B (assuming you hold tight on the handlebars), lasts the whole day on a single charge and doesn’t pollute. I’d say its a good thing.

Mounting these tiny mopeds, we set off in the darkness to climb the temple and complete activity 1 of 3 in Bagan.

We reach the Pagoda at 5:30. Sunrise was still half hour away, and there were already a group of people clustered above the temple chatting animatedly about the Spanish vs. Portuguese. So much for my meditative morning at the temple. Quiet requests for them to shut the he%# up did no good. So we resignedly went to the other side of the temple roof to view the sunrise.

Once the first rays of the morning started to clear the mist, all conversation stopped however, as the glory of the view sank in to all present. It was a view to behold. Slowly, the sun came up, and about 500 Pagodas came into view. It was breathtaking.

While we were fulfilling the Kings wishes and gazing, we hear these loud engines start up, and we were all wondering what in the world was happening. Soon it became clear. At about 6:15AM, all the hot air balloons in Bagan started to inflate together. It was as if they were in perfect harmony with each other. In about 10 minutes we saw 4 huge balloons arise next to us, while at the same time 4 more arose in the horizon, 3 more aways away, and a bunch more here and there. Soon the sky was awash with balloons as at least 20 balloons took to the skies together and streamed across our field of view.

All in all, a good start to the day. The rest of the day Jodee and I took our e-Bikes and went from temple to temple, having some serendipitous experiences in the process (coming soon!)