Tuesday 22 November: BAGAN

We leave in a rickety old truck just after 5 am and make our way to the "launch zone". We are given a safety drill and told how to get into the basket. The balloons are inflated and we get in. Take off is very smooth and we are soon high above the Bagan area with all its pagodas and stupas. Bagan has 2,000 or so ancient monasteries,temples, shrines and stupas - the remains of an ancient city that had its hayday in the 11th to 13th centuries and which Marco Polo much admired. It's spread over a 26 square mile area with the Ayerwaddy river over to the west. There are 16 balloons in total and we all float gently south westwards. We see the sun rise and the light changes on all the temples, as the brick glows warmly in the sunshine. We pass directly over a golden stupa. After an hour and twenty minutes we land very gently in a field and it takes the crew a while to get to us. We then have a glass of champagne and some banana cake. Rather bizarrely I buy a copy of George Orwell's Burmese Days from an itinerant seller who comes up to us on his motorbike. Then back to the hotel and we rejoin the group and cycle around the Bagan area, visiting many temples on the way. We visit a temple with four Buddhas at each point of the compas. They have no necks, the ears touch the shoulders and the fingers are square....so not all Buddhas are alike...these are more modern ones. In the evening we go to the top of a brick temple to watch the sunset. We are not the only ones there! So sunrise and sunset in one day! We have supper at a local restaurant with puppeteers and dancers from the local village.