How we got those shots

It's quite easy to look at other people's travel photos, look at them, and then imagine yourself in the same place.  Wouldn't it be exotic to be in the same place looking at the same thing?  I admit that I do it a lot, especially when I read National Geographic and see photos of far off places with exotic people.  However, it's easy to forget what it takes to get those photos and what it takes to actually get there.  Since we haven't invented magical teleportation devices, yet, sometimes just getting the good photo requires a lot of drudgery and frustration.

Let's take our recent trip to Bagan as an example.  Normally Bagan is a very dry place.  In fact, it's pretty easy to bump into a cactus while poking around the thousands of temples.  However, for the first two days that we were there, we ended up running into the middle of a tropical storm that soaked the area for around 48 hours straight.  When we finally got a sunny day, we took off with aplomb and and went out into the vast fields of ancient temples.

Sand + Water = Slow Going

When we started out, it was good going.  Our rusting cruiser bikes served us well on the dirt tracks and we were able to go wherever our whim took us.


However, we quickly ran into the result of the constant rainfall, which wasn't pretty.  If you haven't had the pleasure of trying to walk through sand that has thoroughly been soaked in rain, the best way is to describe it is a combination of glue and quicksand.  We found this out quickly when stubbornly tried to ride our bikes through it.  The end result of that escapade was hand-fulls of mud lodged in between our tires and splash guards; enough mud that the wheels wouldn't move.  So, we spent a good portion of the next 30 minutes scraping mud from our bikes with sticks we found on the ground.  

Not being able to ride through it, we tried to step through it but we quickly found ourselves in ankle-deep mud that liked to take our sandals from us.  We next tried to walk around it only to realize that the trails are surrounded by thorny bushes that like to make deep gashes in our legs.

Sooo...what to do?


We eventually decided that we would have to carry our bikes through the water and mud and hope that we didn't sink too much into the ground along the way.  Sometimes, when all the options suck, you have to take the option that sucks.  I think Confucius said that.

The First Destination

After trudging our bikes through the mud and water, we finally arrived at one temple (Thabeik Hmauk for you Bagan-ofiles) that was, of course, surrounded by a newly-formed moat.  Seeing as we were already wet and muddy, we went ahead and trudged our way to the temple where we were met by the caretakers: a 70+ year-old woman who liked to sing to herself and a man missing half his leg.

The woman, not speaking a word of English while continuously smiling and humming to herself, led us up a dark stairwell to the upper echelons of the temple.  Judging by their surprised looks and the amount of water around us, we guessed that we were probably the only visitors they were going to get for the day.  We took advantage of the situation and lingered alone on the roof, only interrupted occasionally by the old woman belting out a Burmese song.


After hanging out in the temple for a while, we gave the caretakers a tip for showing us around and then headed back to the island where we left our bikes.  Upon reaching our two-wheeled transport, we were greeted by a goat shepherd non-nonchalantly leading his animals through the much that we just struggled to get through.  Following the goats was a herd of cows, which was followed by us.


On to the next place

Assuming that the animals were smarter than us, we followed the same footsteps that they did and made it across the river/mud without too many issues: only a couple of new gashes from thorns and a new layer of mud stuck to our sandals.  In front of us, we finally saw a large expanse of dry land which we happily followed until we reached a huge temple that we had been eying for days (Pyathada Paya).

Again, since it was a hard day of traveling, we found ourselves nearly all alone in a huge, ancient temple, the only other inhabitants being the bats squawking as they flew around the ceilings.


Walking around, we found an unlocked gate and headed up a set of stairs to an massive and empty platform, ready for us to explore.  Again, we took our time walking around, taking in the views, and listening to the wind and the occasional sound of cow bells ringing in the distance.


Just to give you a sense of how alone we were up on this massive temple, here's a picture of me.  I'm that little spec near the bottom:


What is there to do at a gigantic, ancient temple in the middle of Myanmar?  Play with the timer function on the camera, that's what.  It's a good thing no one was around to see this as I'm sure people would have walked away thinking that we were annoying, crazy, or both:


The Story Keeps Going

Unfortunately, for me the story didn't end there.  Not surprisingly, walking through standing water with livestock plus walking around barefoot on top of floors covered in bat guano are both not good for your feet.  A day later, my right foot became infected with something nasty that slowed me down to a limp for the next couple of weeks.  Two weeks later, it's on its way out and I'm finally back to having two useful feet.

In the long run, though, I know that I'll probably forget about all the annoying things that we went through to do a little sight seeing.  What will remain will be fond memories and a good laugh over how we spent time scraping mud from our $1/day bikes.