Day 4: to Bagan

A 4:30 am start for our trip to Bagan, with our prearranged "transfers" on both ends and an uneventful flight (the best kind), puts us at our Bagan lodging about 9:00 am. Delighted to find the place quite nice, with pleasant sitting areas and great wifi to make use of them.





By the way, the weather has been terrific, and in Bagan is even more comfortable.

Bagan is about pagodas, hundreds, if not thousands of them, and there is no direction you can look without seeing one.



We do have a tolerance threshold, but in our first day we discovered little differences that can maintain one's interest.

You might think it's a mistake to start with the most important one, the Ananda Phato, but not if you're Dana from The Dalles. It is very impressive, of course, both the exterior, which has a cleaned wing...



and precleaned ones....




and the interior, which has 31 ft tall solid teak Buddha images facing the four directions, in differing mudras (poses), including the "no fear" position...




(note the robed monk grabbing a pic with a tablet), and an open hands position, that the LP says is found no where else in Buddha imaging.





One of the statues differs from itself (huh?) in that from afar it appears to be smiling...





but close up seems a little sad.





Getting attuned to the differences, I took snaps of the Buddha images around the interior of another pagoda (we visited 10 or so), and they reveal surprising differences.






















One pagoda had no Buddhas at all - because it was Hindu, erected prior to the Buddhafication of Bagan. The images are of Vishnu..




and Shiva.




We will explore more of the pagodas and their unique features in the next few days.

One detraction: Bagan is Myanmar's top tourist attraction, and it shows. Aggressive pursuit of tourists, unlike elsewhere in Myanmar, is the rule, rather than the rare exception.

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