Bagan: The Everlasting Beauty Of An Ancient Land

It’s been two full weeks since the beginning of this adventure and our Burmese days have already started to get a different rhythm compared to our old London life. The mornings start extremely early, when the sun has just risen and the heat is mild enough to allow you to jump off the bed and have a quick breakfast before the temperatures reach 30°. On the other side, the evenings and nights are very lazy and we usually go to sleep around 10pm, after a very long and intense day.

SLEEP, WANDER, EAT, REPEAT. What a wonderful life!

After spending many days in the beautiful Yangon, we take a bus to the city of Bagan, an ancient archeological area officially inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The ride from Yangon is very long - 10 hours - so we decide to sleep on a night bus to be ready to visit the place the next morning.

Bagan is one of the most famous sites in the whole Myanmar, so the concentration of tourists here is definitely higher than the other places we visited. As we are trying to avoid very crowded and touristic areas (because of the virus and also because our original idea of immersing in the most authentic Burmese life possible), we decide to stay in a town near Bagan called Nyaung-U.

To give you an idea of how it looks like, the whole Bagan area can be represented as a big triangle, with Nyaung-U, Old Bagan and New Bagan in the corners and the archeological site as the area of the triangle.

Old Bagan is the original town, mostly inhabited by locals and with no sign of hotels, while New Bagan is the touristic town full of hotels, hostels, restaurants, shops and everything you can expect from a touristic place. Nyuang-U is far less touristic and despite having a few hotels, it is hard to bump into a Western tourist while visiting the town. However, there is a long road that collects all restaurants and shops where you can find plenty of locals and tourists. A good place to enjoy your dinners!

There is a reason why UNESCO nominated Bagan a World Heritage Site: this is one of the most beautiful places you will ever visit in your life. The site reminds of a gigantic desert crossed by two main roads that connect the cities, while the rest is pretty much left “au naturel”: dirt roads, desert, arid landscapes and temples scattered everywhere.

The site includes more than 3,000 temples and pagodas built between the 11th and 13th century, all of which can be visited and are still used by Buddhist pilgrims from all over the country and beyond. Their size vary from tiny “chapels” to gigantic pagodas, like the Dhammayangyi Pagoda, visible from all parts of Bagan.

We took an e-scooter, which is the most popular way of transport in Bagan. The area is way too vast to be covered on foot! E-scooters allow you to reach every corner of the site, to stop at the temple or pagoda you like the most and to take many great pictures. We had so much of fun riding on the dirt roads and getting lost in-between the temples! We rented our scooter directly from our guest house for 7,000 MMK per day, but they can also be rented from shops in every city.

Needless to say, the two most beautiful things to witness in this place are sunrise and sunset. Unfortunately but also for preserving and safety reasons, tourists are strictly banned from climbing these ancient temples. This law was introduced slightly before we arrived in Bagan so it was a shame we couldn’t reach the top of the pagodas to get the perfect view! However, there are still many manmade hills and other places that will equally do the job.

Temples scattered through the site

SUNRISE

It’s not just waiting for the sun to illuminate the sky that makes it worth waking up at 5am and riding the e-scooter through the desert in the cold and dark of the night. The main reason is that hot-air balloons start floating in the air with the first lights of the sunrise, making this moment one of the most magical you will ever witness. As the new sun illuminates the pagodas and the balloons, the town wakes up, roosters crow and early bird locals start populating the streets. You feel like all of the energy of the world is within you and you are ready to start the day with a stronger conscience of yourself and the things around you.

Little hint: Balloons can rise either from East or West according to where they landed the day before. Make sure you know this info before you find a spot to see them riding over Bagan or you might be too far from them. Once they depart, you have around 30/45 minutes to take pictures from different angles of the site.

Beautiful view of the balloons above the temples at sunrise

SUNSET

Sunsets have always been the most beautiful part of the day for me. Whenever I can, I try to stop for a moment to see the sun disappearing behind the horizon and I use this time to re-think about what I achieved during the day that is just gone.

You can imagine how ecstatic I was when I witnessed the sunset in Bagan for the first time: we managed to find a nice spot and watch it from a manmade hill just behind the big Sulamani Pagoda which was unfortunately full of tourists.

The colours of the big, rounded sun warm up the whole place as well as your heart, and the time seems to stop for a moment. You are witnessing the end of the day and the beginning of the night in a magical place filled with history and everlasting beauty. Don’t miss a second of it!

Little hint n° 2: If you want to see the sunset from the hill near Sulamani Pagoda, make sure you are there at around 5:30pm, 30 mins before the sunset. You will still be alone as most of the tourists arrive with buses and taxis about 10 mins before sunset.

Enchanted view of Bagan at sunset