Day 148 - North to Bagan

04.30 taxi to Rangoon airport (interestingly, while the army managed to change lots of things about Burma - including of course the capital's formal name from Rangoon to Yangon - the airport code steadfastly remains RGN)  

In fact, our early start proved to be in vain as, we're just on board and astonishingly a fog sets in

and it's back to the terminal for two hours - never mind,  we were never going to be in Bagan early enough to see very much this morning before the sun turned on the burners.  Views from the plane were nice once we got up there (to travel the 429 miles north).

Bagan - or more formally the "Bagan Archaeological Zone" - is a 20-odd-sq-mile area, containing thousands of temples (variously called Pahto or Paya), built by a succession of kings between 1047 and 1287, when the Mongol hordes came knocking.  We're staying within the walls of Old Bagan (apparently the hotel was built for a 1927 visit by the then Prince of Wales) next to the Irrawaddy River which makes for lovely breakfast views.

We've whittled down the list to about 20 of our must-see temples, which sounds like a lot of temples and we know we probably won't manage all of those in four days as they're quite spaced out across the Zone.  We're thinking about our options for covering the ground to reach them all - probably house and cart - if only I'd learned to ride a bicycle (a very common way to get around).

Meanwhile, our real intro to the sheer scale was the sunset view from Shwesundaw Paya (sadly along with the world and his wife - look at how many folk there are on another tall temple across the valley). 

The panorama is quite extraordinary

 
even if it does take some hauling to get up there!

Next plan is to get up close and see inside some temples too - we've got our work cut out!