The temples of Bagan (Myanmar)

March 05, 2021

The temples of Bagan (Myanmar)

From my diary (November 2011)

At six that evening, the coach leaves Yangon station for my next destination: the mythical Bagan, the heart of Burmese Buddhism. Sitting next to me in the bus is Hlaing, a kindly entrepreneur, diminutive, with the whitest and most regular set of teeth I have ever seen. Together with his mother and his niece who are seated in the row in front of us, he has been invited to Bagan for the wedding of a dear friend’s son.

The light is beginning to fall as we leave Yangon, and around us there is just the open countryside, with palms and other trees, and here and there a few indigent stilted huts made of wood and vegetable fibres, similar to those I had observed the previous year in Laos along the road linking Ventiane to Luang Phrabang. When night falls, the nearly full moon lights up an ancestral landscape, similar, I imagine, to how it must have appeared in Europe a few centuries ago, dark, without any artificial lighting for miles and miles. Every now and then, from out of the darkness emerge shadows of more wooden huts, or of small villages along the road, and every so often a dim light flickering through a window, perhaps an oil lamp. At a certain point, we stop on the side of the road to relieve our bladders in the fields, above us a clear sky, embroidered with hundreds of stars. It really is like having travelled back in time, to a remote age when the night was truly night, and when Man was still small in comparison to nature all around him, which he respected.

About ten hours after our departure from Yangon, at around four in the morning, we arrive at one of the villages close to Bagan’s vast archaeological area. The village, Nyaung U, lies on the banks of the Irrawaddy River, arising from the confluence of the N’mai and Mali rivers which, in turn, are born in the Himalayas. The Irrawaddy flows alongside Mandalay and Bagan before dispersing into the waters of the Andaman Sea.

I get off at the mouth of the village, following Hlaing who walks me to the small hotel where I intend to stay, located near his friend’s house, while carts drawn by horses canter past us.

After a long and refreshing sleep, I rise at lunchtime. At night, the temperature drops quite a bit, unlike in Yangon, and one can sleep well as a result. I then go out for a short walk. The sky is a deep blue now, ploughed by big white clouds. Here, I see motorbikes on the streets, besides a few cars, buses and lorries, not to mention the ubiquitous bicycles. Most of the houses along the main streets are made of concrete and comprise two floors, but the houses along the dusty side streets are similar to those I caught a glimpse of during our journey here: made of wood and vegetable fibres, filled with friendly people in longyi, their faces covered in thanaka. I take my lunch in a small restaurant that opens out onto the street, and then rent a bicycle to start my exploration of the temples around Old Bagan, which are located about four kilometres further southwest. As soon as I am out of the town, the wonder unfolds before me. Wherever I turn, to the left and right of the road, there arise ancient temples small and big, nearly a thousand years old, amidst the green of the countryside...