A Second Sunrise in Bagan - The Elevated Moments

The sunrise feels so slow today, as if all the anticipation has worn off, and the sun’s movements feels the same. The bright orange ball, masked by the far reaching layers of plain’s dust, crawls upwards towards the sky. There’s silence around for miles and only a few birds lift towards the sky. – The sun’s creeping goes unnoticed, but it’s moving still. A new day begins.

Today was our second day in Bagan. We’ve only seen a brief glimpse of Bagan thus far, like traveling to these pagodas. We chose another area, undiscovered, to watch sunrise in the hopes of a better view.

On the map, there was a complex of temples that we found that you could climb to watch sunrise, which was located in the west part of Old Bagan. This seemed like a good location compared to the small hill yesterday where we watched our first sunrise. I can’t say it was 100% better, because the first day was so good, but from this new spot, we had a good vantage point for the temples and sunrise.

It was a cool experience climbing on one of the pagodas. But I shouldn’t promote it too much. Climbing these temples puts a lot of strain on the monuments. They’ve luckily put in a entrance fee for the restoration of the temples, but we’ll see if this corresponds into actual preservation.

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From our elevated spot, we could see the whole temple complex and in the far distance, could see the hot air balloons moving upwards for some sunrise tours.

If you haven’t heard much about Bagan or Myanmar, in general, it’s known for it’s sunrises and sunsets. Each day is somehow incredible and I don’t think I had a disappointing morning or afternoon there.

This morning was so beautiful. I wish it didn’t end. But as the sun came up and the sky started to shine, it was time to move on to exploring the other parts of Bagan.

Location:

This was the location of the complex of temples, which are climbable. Be very careful not to cause any damage when climbing. Some of the spots were very decayed due to people climbing.

It’s a good location that’s farther away from most of the regular sunrise spots. That means that there’s less people around. It got crowded right as the sun was coming up, but then immediately after it all cleared out.