Bagan is a plain of about a hundred square kilometres with more than two thousand Buddhist temples on it. From any rise the horizon bristles with pointed spires — red-brick towers, gilded stupas, and shadowed halls where seated Buddhas wait in the dark. Over ten thousand went up here in barely two centuries, when this was the capital that first drew the lands of modern Myanmar into one state; around 2,200 survive. They sit in a single bend of the Irrawaddy, on dry scrub crossed by sandy tracks, with palms and toddy trees between them. Walk a track for ten minutes and you pass a dozen of them without meeting anyone. Alongside Angkor, this is the greatest concentration of Buddhist architecture in Southeast Asia.
The plain is at its finest at first light. Mist settles low over the scrub, temple silhouettes surface one by one, and as the sky turns orange a handful of hot-air balloons lift off and drift over the ruins almost silently. Ox carts raise dust along the tracks, and the tallest towers — 66-metre Thatbyinnyu, the massive Dhammayangyi — catch the sun before the ground does. You can no longer climb the temples to watch this; the monuments were closed after a strong earthquake in 2016 and low viewing mounds were built instead. Bagan is also harder to reach than its pictures suggest. Myanmar has been under military rule since the 2021 coup, most governments advise against travelling there, and another powerful earthquake in March 2025 cracked and toppled parts of the plain. Balloons still fly from about October to April. For most travellers today Bagan is a place to read about rather than a trip to plan.