We had a free afternoon one day in Bagan and Vicky and I decided to go exploring pagodas on our own. We decided to go on foot so we could really get off the beaten path. From the bus, plane, and top of some pagodas, we had seen lots of pagodas out in farm fields without any roads leading to them and we decided we wanted to go out into the scruff and see what we could find on our own.

1. We were barely off the road when we came upon the first pagoda. I thought it was very unusual. Temples have entrances and you can go inside a temple. Stupas do not have entrances but are solid and you can’t go into a stupa. Pagodas cover both of these. This pagoda looked like a very small stupa when we approached it. But as we walked around it, you can see that it’s really a temple since it has access, despite its small size. So this was very unusual based on what we saw. But again, most of these pagodas in Bagan were built by local families. So they could build a pagoda any way they wanted. Obviously, this family wanted a temple but had limited resources.

2. In the second photo, we are standing at the edge of a field of corn. We were already past the last road and it was all cross-country hiking from there. We kept thinking that some farmer might appear and yell at us for invading his field but we didn’t see anyone out in this area. What we did see was dozens of pagodas as you can see some in the photo.

3. Different sources put the number of pagodas in Bagan at the area’s zenith of pagodas at somewhere from 4,600 to 10,000. But today, most sources put the number of pagodas in Bagan as just over 2,000. What happened to the rest of them. That’s why I included the third photo. We came across a number of old pagodas that only had a little of their base still existing. We were told that some of these have been rebuilt and more will be rebuilt. Of course, there is also controversy over the rebuilding. Most of the rebuilding is being done with “new” bricks that are different dimensions from the original bricks. Our guide pointed this out to us on a few pagodas and once you see the difference, it is obvious which are the old bricks and which are the new bricks.

4. We stopped for a break at this pagoda. Again, we had long ago left the last road. The area looked well cared for but we never saw any people on our off road hike. Just in this photo, there are probably parts of fifteen pagodas, and that’s just in one direction.

5. I included the last photo just to show that we did see quite a bit of variation in the pagodas. We didn’t see any others like this one but we saw others that were just as unique.