Burma is sometimes called the Land of the Pagodas or the Land of the Golden Pagodas. Our guide said that the Burmese call everything built to honor Buddha a pagoda. That includes both temples and stupas. Temples are structures that you can enter or walk inside. Stupas cannot be entered. But the Burmese call both pagodas. For Burmese, the building and the donation of a pagoda for the propagation of Buddhist faith manifests the devotion demonstrated by Myanmar Buddhists. Pagodas can be any size. Most of the pagodas in the Bagan area were, according to our guide, built by local families. Most often, they were built right on the family’s farm. Sometimes, the same family, if prosperous, would build several pagodas.

The Bagan Dynasty was very prosperous. The Bagan Golden Age was from around 1044 to 1287 with 1287 being the year when the Mongols overtook them. The estimates of the number of pagodas in the Bagan area vary by wide margins. There is some historical evidence that some 4,446 pagodas were built in a sixteen square mile area around Old Bagan. Some estimates put the number of pagodas in a forty square mile area at around 10,000 pagodas. The number generally considered appropriate today for pagodas still standing is some number a little over 2,000 pagodas. Many of the old pagodas are being restored and some new ones are being built, so the number will always vary over time, and it can’t be easy to count them all.

This post’s photos will just give a glimpse of the pagoda situation in Bagan.

The first photo is one that I took on our flight into Bagan airport. It’s not a great photo but you can get an idea of the number and variation of the pagodas in Bagan.

The last four photos will give you some sense of the Plains of Bagan. These ‘plains’ are not like what we think of as a plains in the sense of being wide open, though they might have been at one time. Today, large trees grow over much of the plains of Bagan. You will also notice a great deal of variation in the pagodas. The variation comes from different factors. First, one builder might have had more money and made a much larger and more extravagant pagoda. Plus, the architectural styles changed over the years. The architecture developed and a historian can tell the early from the middle from the late periods just by the shapes of the pagodas. This area is primarily an agriculture area. Farms surround the pagodas on all sides most of the time. In the last photo, you can see a farmer with a herd of goats. You can also see many palm trees in the upper portion of the last photo and these are all being farmed.

I will be posting many more pagoda photos but I’ll try and break them up. About a week into our trip, I said I had about had my fill of temples and couldn’t remember one from another. Pete said he felt that way by the second day. But pagodas are a big part of Myanmar’s culture and history and their present day, so you will be seeing many more of them.