An ambitious plan of decribing and photographing today's long sightseeing day goes to Wanda and Paweł.
Bagan – formerly Pagan, once city-state in Myanmar which used to be its capital during the period from the ninth to the thirteenth century. The kingdom’s height was in XI-XIII century when, among other things developed here Buddhism.
That’s when more than 10,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas, stupas and monasteries were built here. Although during this trip we had the opportunity to see many sights, I believe everyone was excited about the possibility of exploring this extraordinary place – at least we were.
In the morning we went to the nearby market in Nyuang U, to see how the city and the market come to life. Mischance Wanda has small (as it seemed at first) accident. A wooden cart while transporting goods to market ran over her foot. Fortunately, with doctors on board, toes have been examined, treated and Wanda was 'stuffed with' analgesics. Unfortunately, it resulted with her being less mobile L
Once the situation was under control, we began to follow the itinerary. It is impossible to see, not to mention visit, all 2500-4000 (different sources give different numbers) pagodas and stupas but we managed to “do” a lot of them. Several of them we visited even in some details. During the visits we learned that at the beginning of the 11th century when Buddhism arrived in these areas all erected pagodas contained in their ornaments elements of Hindu motifs (here and there the image of Vishnu, windows in the style of Hindu - the corners of the rooms of the temple, etc.) .
In addition, in the earliest of these objects decorating contained unheard of in other parts of the country, descriptions. Under paintings depicting scenes from the life of Buddha, bore a brief description explaining. It was aimed to educate new "believers". Most of the temples was established between the eleventh and thirteenth century, therefore, most images of Buddha are very similar in all.
They differ as to the shape and ornamentation. It seems that here a major role to play, had imagination of the founder and also architect. One characteristic is that the newer temples are built with a combination of brick and sandstone in order to strengthen resistance to occasionally occurring in this region of the earthquake. Furthermore, the mixed setting of bricks was used, upright and normally, in order to make the buildings erected lasted as long as possible, regardless of seismic events.
Of course, there is plenty of curiosities. In one of the temples (which resembles its shape pyramid native of the country of the Incas), we noticed two statues of Buddha - male and female. Unfortunately, we found it wandering alone without assistance of our guide, so we do not know what that means.
Among the stupas, numerous small monasteries were located. It is easy to identify the remains of those monasteries. They were built for rectangular and "shaped" as cuboids. This place was convenient for building monasteries, due to the proximity of human settlements, the lake and the object of worship.
Interesting is also the fact that some of these temples is still active. In connection with the faith, believers are still making donations the temples improvements. These temples are easy to recognize from a distance, as they are shining white and gold, among others of brick and brown in colour. Unfortunately, these treatments are not accepted by UNESCO and it caused questioning of further grants.
