Tatler - One step ahead: Bagan, Burma
September 2011
The overnight sleeper from Rangoon rocks like a teacup in a storm -- but it’s worth it. Leaving city sprawl behind, the train passes through paddy fields towards dusty scrubland studded with palms. Windows are flung wide open -- joy! Women sell samosas from the tracks; kids call out for sweets and dollars, and cows laze under mango trees. Burma unfolds around you like a quiet movie about broken hearts and an Asia of another age. Stop at Bagan: it’s the country’s Angkor without the crowds. Instead, there are bite-sized Buddhist temples on the banks of the Irrawaddy. They’re best explored by rickety bicycle as you can freewheel among the thousands of stupas and shrines. Spread out in the prayer rooms of Shwezigon Paya, serene and beautiful. Befriend lovely local ladies who’ll paint your cheeks with yellow thanaka pigment -- a beauty treatment practised countrywide -- and others who’ll read your future in the reflection of a pagoda in a puddle the size of a penny. Remember always to ‘travel local’, like you should everywhere in Burma: shun package tours; stay in family-run guesthouses; buy sand-paintings from the wandering artists; feast on fish curries and fresh lime juice at the riverside Beach Bar or candlelit garden of Black Bamboo. When you leave here, make sure you wake early to catch the ferry which departs pre-dawn. It chugs upstream to mythical Mandalay. And remember how lucky you are to have seen Bagan now.