Scooters, Sunsets and Serious Sunshine

Our time in Bagan started in the same way as many of our travels - with a long and horrible bus journey. Given we arrived in Inle overnight and that we were both half asleep, it was easy to forget that we'd actually travelled up through the mountains to get there. The way to Bagan, which is west of Inle, involved driving down the steep roads that had led us there in a bus which can only be described as aged.

WARNING: Those of delicate disposition skip to paragraph 3! The actual journey itself was not even bad by the standards we are used to, but that didn't stop a child vomiting the entire can of Red Bull he consumed all over the bus only two hours into the ten hour trip. Given we were heading down a steep mountain road, the sick splashed all the way down the aisle and under our seats, getting on our bags, shoes and feet. The smell was horrendous and having to watch the chunks slide around on the floor was just something we didn't need. To this day even the thought of energy drink, let alone the smell, moves me to gag. On a side note, this is something that seems super common in Myanmar - people just seem to vomit all the time, which is not something either of us expected. They seem oddly prone to travel sickness, and coming across more than one person vomiting into a bag on the same bus is not an uncommon sight. It seems so common in fact that nobody even bats an eyelid and they just leave the mess and smell to fester, which is not something we ever want to get used to.

Moving on from the above, the other novelty of the trip down the mountain was the manual cooling of the breaks, which saw the bus stop at the side of the road, and a little woman in a hut bring out buckets and a hosepipe. This happened twice on the descent and was mildly disconcerting to say the least.

Once we made it to Bagan proper, we had some time to recover before making the decision to do something I swore I would NEVER do, for fear of death. We hired an electric scooter. Most backpackers don't even think twice before hiring a scooter, but we'd seen so many scrapes and crazy driving from cars and other bikes that we never felt truly safe to drive our own. In Bagan however, necessity outweighed fear, as a scooter is absolutely essential to explore. Spread over approximately 100 kilometres squared, about 2200 Buddhist temples and pagodas remain of the 10,000 that originally made up the capital of the Pagan Empire. In fact according to Wiki Travel, the area is the largest and densest concentration of Buddhist temples, pagodas, stupas and ruins in the world. Given the size and temperature (about 42 degrees) I decided to face my fear and sit on the back of the bike, all the while digging my nails into Joe as we trundled down the dusty roads in search of adventure.

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Up until recently, the pagodas were open for people to climb and look out over the landscape, but new rules to preserve the structures have meant that most are now closed and those that are open are pretty crowded for the famous sunsets and sunrises. There are however some elevated viewing platforms on some man-made hills, as well a tall purpose built viewing tower, so you can still get some lovely shots of the skyline complete with temples. Unfortunately we missed ballooning season by about 10 days, but between October and early April, companies in Bagan offer visitors the chance to watch the sunrise from a hot air balloon, which creates an incredible view from the ground for those unable or unwilling to fork out the $450 per person(!). Despite the slight disappointment of the balloons, we were able to use our scooter to visit many of the most intact and working temples, as well as some smaller and more peaceful sites. The whole place was so special and kind of eerily magical - it's definitely a recommended place to spend a few days and was well worth travelling to Myanmar for.