Bagan

Bagan is 120 km or so downstream from Mandalay.  There is a ferry that takes 10 hours to make the trip.  tt was quicker to go by bus, which still made for a long, uneventful day over barren landscape.  A stop for lunch at Leptan Village and  street life in a small village we stopped at along the way broke the ride.  Arriving in Old Bagan mid-afternoon, we lazed on the terrace in front of our cottage, had a margarita (or two), and I enjoyed a before-dinner cheroot from the Inle Lake factory we visited four days earlier.

Bagan flourished between the 9th to 13th centuries as the religious, cultural, and political center of the Pagan Empire, overlapping in time the Angkor Watt complex in Cambodia during the 11th and 12th centuries.  The Mongol incursions between 1277 C.E. and 1301 C.E. led to the collapse of the empire, its population falling from around a hundred thousand to that of a small town.  It never recovered, many temples falling into disrepair both through neglect and earthquakes, though it continued as a minor religious pilgrimage site.  In the latter half of the 18th century, and in the 1990's the state undertook restoration projects, but with little attention paid to authenticity or use of quality materials.  As a result UNESCO has not recognized it as a World Heritage Site.

Despite all that, it is still awesome.