A Bicycle Ride Around Bagan, Burma

We noted a story in the Los Angeles Times news section last year examining the Myanmar government’s ill-conceived, theme park-like development among the historic temples in the ancient city of Bagan. On Sunday, the Times covered the story from a traveler’s standpoint. Joe Robinson visited Bagan, exploring the temples on a rented girl’s bicycle with a leopard-print seat.

As he writes, he happened upon some memorable views:

The backdraft stirred up a storm of dry-season dust, and as it settled, I could make out a surreal spectacle from the top of the rise: a sea of otherworldly steeples dancing in the heat waves—some conical, others topped with doughnut-shaped rings, some with glinting golden umbrellas, some sculpted into immense bells. Despite the heat, it was not a mirage. The sci-fi skyline is the legacy of a mysterious building boom that turned this central Burmese savanna astride the Irrawaddy River into one of Asia’s most sprawling but least-known extravaganzas of religious architecture.

Robinson witnessed some of the new construction underway, and plenty of neglect, too.

“Without proper preservation, thousands of works of art are threatened, one Burmese expert who asked not to be identified told me,” he writes. “I saw priceless murals of life in the 12th century under attack by termites, which target the sugar used in the ancient plaster.”

Of course, there’s an ongoing debate about the ethics of visiting Myanmar—or Burma.

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