Tuesday morning dawned bright and clear - good weather for a morning bike ride around the pagodas! A good way to see a few more of the pagodas (and appreciate how many there were) - and to properly experience the local roads (2 tarmac/cement, the rest sand tracks)
We stopped to tour two specific pagodas, in a village which was on holiday and busily preparing for its pagoda festival, due to start two days after our visit. The village had originally been founded as a Mon village: apparently in around the 11th century, the king of Burma (then based in Bagan) asked the Mon king (Mon being situated in what is now south Burma but was at the time a separate kingdom) to share Buddha's scriptures and teaching but he refused. So the Bagan King conquered Mon and brought the royal family (+ others) and scriptures back to Bagan. The first temple we visited - Nan Phaya Temple (C12th) was built by the Mon people to honour their King after his death - beautiful sandstone carvings. The second - Manuha Temple (C11th) was built by the Mon King, and is said to resemble a prison: specifically, by reference to the size of the Buddha statutes as compared with the building housing them. All very interesting!
Off on the bikes again, our next stop was at Mingalar Zedi pagoda, which we were able to climb to the top terrace of (a very steep set of stairs: would not be good in wet weather!) for amazing views over Bagan:
Time for one more temple before lunch - the 12th C Sula Mani Temple - in a beautiful national park before heading back to the hotel for an afternoon relaxing by the pool:
For sunset, we headed to the Bagan Viewing Tower (conveniently located in our hotel complex) for more amazing panoramic views of Bagan.
No comments:
Post a Comment