Bagan 2012 – Why Myanmar’s Ancient Temple Plain Still Haunts Me

Bagan, Myanmar — Why the Ancient Temple Plain Still Haunts Me

My iPhone surprised me. It created a slideshow from my 2012 Bagan photos — that automatic memory feature phones do now. I watched it on a Thursday afternoon and felt something I did not expect: a quiet sadness that the place I was watching no longer exists in quite the same way.

I went to Bagan for the first time in 2010, then again in 2012. Both times, Myanmar had no ATMs. You had to bring cash like a drug dealer. You planned your budget in Rangoon and hoped you had enough to last the trip. That was part of what made it feel like a different century.

What Bagan Actually Is

Bagan is a plain in central Myanmar covered with more than two thousand Buddhist temples and pagodas, built between the 11th and 13th centuries during the First Burmese Empire. At its peak there were more than ten thousand religious structures here. What remains is still the most concentrated collection of Buddhist monuments in the world.

The plain stretches roughly 40 square kilometres along the eastern bank of the Irrawaddy River. Most visitors arrive in Nyaung-U, the main town, and use bicycles or horse carts to reach the temples. The three main archaeological zones — Old Bagan, Nyaung-U, and Minnanthu — each have their own character and concentration of monuments. The best-known temples — Ananda, Shwezigon, Htilominlo, Dhammayangyi — are on the main tourist circuit. The hundreds of smaller, unnamed pagodas are off it, and far more interesting to wander through alone.

What It Was Like in 2010 and 2012

When I arrived in 2010 — and again in 2012 — you could rent a bicycle and ride through the temples almost alone. Not just at 6 AM. All day. You could climb a temple, sit at the top watching the plains, and not see another tourist for an hour. You could enter buildings that were unlocked, that had no admission fee, that nobody was monitoring. The whole plain felt like it belonged to the crows and the old monks and the few travellers who had found their way there.

The guesthouses in Old Bagan and Nyaung-U were small family operations. You negotiated the room price. The owner brought breakfast. The electricity went off at 10pm. Everything was intimate in a way that mass tourism kills, and in 2010 Bagan was still on the cusp of that transformation.

How It Changed, and Why That Matters

Myanmar opened to international tourism in earnest after 2012, and Bagan felt that change almost immediately. By 2014 there were hot air balloons every morning. By 2016 the sunset temple platforms were so crowded that the government restricted climbing to a small number of designated viewpoints — and justified this partly for preservation reasons, which is correct. The 2016 earthquake damaged over two hundred temples. The restoration that followed brought UNESCO scrutiny and more infrastructure, not less.

The 2021 military coup changed the situation again, sharply. Tourist numbers dropped to near zero. Bagan became one of the least-visited major archaeological sites in Asia almost overnight. The practical question of whether it is currently accessible or safe is one that travellers need to check against current government travel advisories before making plans — conditions have been complex and continue to evolve.

The Temples Worth Knowing

Ananda Pahto, built around 1105, is the most beautiful of the large temples — a perfectly proportioned white structure with gilded spires visible from across the plain. Inside, four standing Buddhas of 9.5 metres each face the cardinal directions. The quality of the carving in the corridors is extraordinary and largely intact.

Dhammayangyi is the largest temple in Bagan and the most unsettling. King Narathu, who murdered his father and brother to take the throne, built it as an act of atonement. He was himself assassinated before it was completed. The inner passageways were bricked up by his successors and have never been reopened. The outer walls are massive — almost oppressively so — and the brickwork is the finest in Bagan.

Sulamani Pahto, set slightly south of the main circuit, is covered in murals and has a quality of light in the late afternoon that makes it worth visiting twice. Shwesandaw, the multi-terraced temple that was the main sunset viewpoint before climbing was restricted, has five terraces and a commanding position over the plain.

Practicalities

In normal times — check current conditions before travelling — you fly to Nyaung-U airport from Yangon or Mandalay (1 hour). Buses from Mandalay take 6–7 hours on a reasonable road. The Bagan Archaeological Zone admission was $25 USD in the pre-coup era. Accommodation ranges from guesthouses in Nyaung-U (budget) to resort hotels in the Old Bagan zone. The best time to visit is November to February: dry, cool mornings, and the best visibility for the balloon flights that have become part of the Bagan experience.

For most visitors, three nights gives you enough time: a full day on bicycle covering the main temples, a half-day for the outer villages of Minnanthu and Pwasaw, and one more to follow your own instinct wherever the roads lead. The fourth morning, if you have it, is for sunrise on an empty terrace before the day begins.

Why It Still Matters

I have been to Angkor Wat. I have been to Borobudur in Java. I have stood in front of monuments that took centuries to build and are now visited by millions of people a year. Bagan is in that conversation, and in one significant way it is ahead of all of them: it is still a living religious site. Monks live in some of the pagodas. Families make offerings at shrines that have been used for a thousand years. The connection between the past and the present has not been severed in the way it has at sites that became purely archaeological. That is worth something. It is worth going to see, even knowing that the going is different from what it was, and that the place I watched on my phone that Thursday afternoon is not quite the place you will find today.