Journey 02 · Myanmar
Counting Temples, Badly
A week on the Bagan plain
Published 9 Jan 2026 · Travelled 6–13 Dec 2025
- 9 moments
- 8 days
- 25 km
- Winter
- Myanmar (Burma)
- 23mm · f/5.6 · 1/640
- 21.2020° N, 94.9050° E
- Nyaung U jetty
- 16:40
- 30°C, dry season gold
The boat from Mandalay puts you ashore at a jetty that is really just a decision the bank made. Porters ran planks like tightropes while the flags of moored boats sorted the wind. Twelve hours of the Irrawaddy does something good to your sense of hurry: it deletes it.
- 23mm · f/4 · 1/250
- 21.1690° N, 94.8600° E
- Old Bagan plain
- 06:25
- 15°C, cold mist, then gold
From a temple mound in the dark I watched the balloons stand up one by one, then rise together over the pagodas like paper lanterns released in slow motion. All around, spires to the horizon in the mist. I made maybe forty frames and kept four, which for one sunrise is restraint.
bring a jumper. nobody tells you bagan is cold at dawn
- 23mm · f/4 · 1/500
- 21.1630° N, 94.8680° E
- Temple stair, Old Bagan
- 15:10
- 33°C, hot, still
At a brick temple whose name I never learned, a monk climbed the outer stair with his robe catching the only wind of the afternoon. The bricks are twelfth century and hand-shaped; you can see fingermarks if you look low near the base. I waited on the second terrace and took one frame when his robe agreed with the wall.
- 23mm · f/5.6 · 1/400
- 21.1520° N, 94.8750° E
- Temple gate, Bagan
- 11:35
- 31°C, dusty sunshine
My e-bike and I had an understanding: it whined, I steered, the sand decided. Parked at a temple gate it looked exactly like what it was, a small brave machine among giants. Rental cost per day: less than a fancy coffee at home. Range: precisely one adventure.
- 23mm · f/4 · 1/500
- 21.1400° N, 94.8800° E
- 23mm · f/4 · 1/500
- 21.1400° N, 94.8800° E
- Between the temples, Bagan
- 07:40
- 19°C, early gold
Between pagodas the land is still worked: an ox cart came through the dry grass trailing dust the same colour as the temples, and at the Nyaung U market the baskets were full of greens by six. Bagan is not a museum. People live in the spaces the temples left, and always have.
- Bagan plain
- 06:50
Temples on the plain, officially: over two thousand. Temples I managed to count from the terrace before losing my place in the mist: one hundred and forty, twice, with different results.
- 23mm · f/2.8 · 1/320
- 21.1580° N, 94.8830° E
- Minnanthu area, Bagan
- 06:55
- 16°C, mist burning off
Not every temple wants the wide shot. This one stood alone in the mist with a haze the colour of weak tea, and every other photographer's engine faded somewhere behind me. Sometimes the plain hands you a frame that is basically already developed and asks only that you not ruin it.
Overheard · Nyaung U road · 12:20
"Before, many tourists. Then none. Now, some." — He shrugged at the whole plain. — "The temples do not count visitors. Why should I?" Then he quoted me a price that suggested he absolutely does.
- Sunset mound, Bagan
- 17:45
- 27°C, golden haze
- Last frame
Last evening, haze and backlight turned the temples into paper cutouts, two balloons hanging above them like held breath. I sat on a wall with tea from a flask and let the light finish the trip for me. Two thousand temples and I still could not tell you my favourite. That seems correct.
- 23mm · f/8 · 1/1000
- 21.1550° N, 94.8620° E
The route
9 stops
Journey completed
Eight days, nine stories
- Frames exposed
- 1120
- Temples visited
- 31
- Temples visible at once, best
- hundreds
- E-bike top speed, downhill
- 42 km/h
- Favourite moment
- Cutting the e-bike motor on a sand track and hearing the whole plain at once
- Best food
- Tea leaf salad at a shop with three tables and one perfect cook
