and so to Bagan

The Burmese of the 10th to the 12th centuries liked pagodas. They really liked pagodas. So much so that in a relatively small area around Bagan there are something like 2,500 pagodas left from the orgy of pagoda building that happened there.

The beautiful thing about Bagan (well, besides of course the pagodas and temples) is that the area is relatively tourist-free. Of course, yes, it is terribly hot, and the beloved SPDC makes it a bit difficult to get there, but still, the place was wonderfully free of tourists (except us, of course, and various and sundry other groups of tourists that we ran into every now and then). But it wasn't overrun, which lent a further air of romanticism as we explored.



As we lost track of the names of these temples, I won't try to re-create, or make up, names for you. Suffice to say that each temple and pagoda had a difficult to pronounce name, named after the king who erected it, the queen it was erected for, the dead guy it was erected to commemorate, or maybe for the magic tissue that was used to blow the mystical nose of some spirit. I mean, with this many pagodas, they really had to be reaching by the end for a reason to erect another one.

This one was particularly cool, inside and out.


Pagodas, Pagodas, Pagodas.