Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman

Touring the Temples

by Tyson Evans

Imagine the thousands of ancient temples scattered across the flat and unpopulated plains along the Irrawaddy River at sunrise. Now imagine the contemporary moment of meta-tourism—hundreds of other tourists, floating along in their own balloons, peppering the landscape and adding to the surreal beauty of the place.


Gliding mid-air at 2,000 feet, strapped in a basket below a massive bag of hot air, is far more tranquil than you might imagine. The hum of car motors and the bustle of street life fade away, replaced by an incredible silence. Though it’s not quite the form of meditation envisioned when the first temples were built in the 11th century.


Bagan, for hundreds of years a center of devotion in the Mandalay region of Mynmar, is a purpose-built town. Our guide says nearly all the residents rely on tourism to earn a living and there is not much more than hotels, dirt-floor restaurants, and lacquerware factories scattered along the one-lane roads. Touring the temples, pagodas, and monasteries couldn’t be easier: choose your preferred mode of transportation (private taxi, scooter, bicycle, or horse cart) and remember to remove your shoes when entering.


Beyond exploring the sprawling pagodas, there are few options. One night we strolled through a festival outside the Ananda temple that was overflowing with locals, food vendors, and some of the same rusty circus rides you might see at a county fair in a small American town. Except here the ferris wheel was powered not with electricity but by a small army of men who climbed up its spokes and hung off for the ride down, eventually creating enough momentum for the wheel to rotate.

Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman

The weekend trip was a much-appreciated detour during a two-week assignment where my wife and I were embedded at two national newspapers. We were sent by the Independent Journalism Foundation to help train and consult with journalists scrambling to adjust to the recent boom of Internet access and a proliferation of daily newspapers after the government lifted a five-decade ban on private newspapers and curtailed its heavy-handed censorship.


This country, known as Burma for much of its history, is experiencing a transformation of astonishing speed and scope. For the past fifty years it was run by military dictatorship and suffered from economic sanctions and disengagement from the world. It has been thrust into the present day with cell phones, unrestricted Internet access, mildly democratic elections, and a heavy dose of capitalism.

But much of the rapid progress is appended with asterisks.

Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman

The former military junta has migrated to the supposedly civilian government. The opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, is constantly pushing to ensure this fall’s election occurs without corruption. A small but influential group of radicalized Buddhist monks preach hatred toward Muslims and, increasingly, the Rohingya, a large ethnic minority desperate to escape the country.


Foreign investment is flowing, albeit cautiously with the unrest, and much of the country still feels frozen in time. The streets of downtown Yangon, the country’s largest city and former capital, are full of striking British colonial buildings now mostly faded and crumbling after years of neglect.


But those were distant concerns back in Bagan on a crisp January morning this year while we were drifting just below the clouds and watching a fireball of a sunrise creep over the mountains in the distance.


The hot-air balloon pilot warned us the landing would be rough. Sure enough, the wicker basket carrying more than a dozen fellow travelers slammed hard into the dirt, nearly tipped over, and skidded along clumsily until coming to a rest alongside a grand Buddhist temple.


After surviving our high-impact landing we climbed out of the balloon and were dwarfed by the shadow of the imposing Shwesandaw Pagoda. A swarm of children and women peddling postcards, lacquer trinkets, and gift-shop mementos surrounded us as the pilot poured all his passengers celebratory champagne. We had become an air-dropped tourist trap.


Later that night we returned to Shwesandaw, along with a horde of other foreigners, climbing up its grand multi-story stone staircases to watch the sunset. On one side of us sat a monk, meditating cross-legged, and to our right, a gaggle of tourists wielding selfie sticks. Myanmar’s perilous moment of transition captured in a thousand hashtagged photos.


Tyson Evans is an editor at The New York Times.

Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman
Tiny Atlas Quarterly, Bagan, Myanmar, Gabriela Herman