40 — Sunday, June 6. 1999 - North Shore News

travel
_ talk

BAGAN: It is the most
amazing sight in
Myanmar if not in
Asia, a dusty piain on a
bend of the mighty
Irrawaddy River sprin-
kled with 2,000 tem-
ples, some of them
topped with gold, and
all of them built in the
quest for nirvana.

T rode around on a horse-
cart with a canopy to ward off
the baking sun, wheels creak-
ing on rough tracks, and
stopped at a stupa (what one
wants to call a pagoda) whe
four enormous Buddh
among decaying plaste

At one side was a steep,
narrow stai almost as
awkward as tunnels in the
pyramids of Giza, but the
reward was a walkaround
panorama of domes reflecting
scorching red and gold. Some
are the small cathedrals,
many quite modest, most have
lost their stucco to reveal red
brick, and here and there work
is ZOING ON to preserve ruins.

aa

Packing
a lunch?
Reuse
containers.

For more ideas
on reducing

garbage call

stand on deck and watch river life.

Labour, perhaps not all

voluntary, could not have
been a problem when Bagan’s

glorious era began during the

reign of King Anawi ratha
(1044-77).

Over a 230-year period
13,000 temples were built by

kings and wealthy traders, and
when Mare
he wrote of
alive with tinkling bells
the swis
robes

Polo came here
ilded city,

and

g sounds of monks

When the Mongol hordes

under Kublai Khan arrived,
the monarch and his court

fled and Bagan quickly
declined. Earthqua’
time destroved the city
wooden monasteri
many of the stupi and when
19th century travellers came
here only 2,000 remained, all
but unknown to the rest of
the world.

A Scotsman called Paddy
Henderson changed all that.
His Irrawadd Flotilla

1863 with four steamers sand
service between Yangon (then
Rangoon) and Mandalay. His

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NEWS photos David Wishart

THE Bagan to Mandalay cruise is a moving platform that allows the dreamer to

shipped to Yangon in pieces
and reassembled there.
Officers were Scottish with
crews from Chittagong.

started off carrying
teak, rice, oil and cotton,
Passenger trattic followed, and
soon tourists too who now
had a to the wonders of
Bagan. The fleet grew to be
one of the world’s biggest
with 602 vessels carrying nine
million people a year, but it all
came toa horrible end in
1942 when the Japanese

Explore page 41

(ORUISE THE NILE...
the Land of the Pharoahs

Video Presentation <-
June 15, 1999.
7 p.m., at our W
rouver office

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