The area of Bagan exploded in temple building dating back to the 11th century, when King Anawrathta was converted from Hindu to Buddhism by the monk Shin Arahan. Like all good monarchs that switch religion, he did so with much gusto and started an enormous Buddhist temple building exercise that lasted the course of 200 years, with over 4000 temples being constructed in the area.

And these temples are literally everywhere. Every where you look, there’s a temple poking out of the green vegetation. It’s truly amazing, and why I just loved this place so much. There’s a dirt path over there? Follow it and soon enough you’re at a temple. See a stupa over in the distance, just start walking that way and sure enough you’re stumbling upon more temples along the way.

After arriving in New Bagan I started the next morning on foot. I like to just walk around the town and get a feel for the place and where everything is. New Bagan is a fantastic town, it has a symbiotic relationship between local life and the tourists, and there’s a good (if somewhat sad) reason for this.

In 1990 the government kicked the residents of Old Bagan out, a rise in temple theft as the reason. The village was relocated here in New Bagan, and the new town, only decades old, has built itself from the ground up as not only a home for the locals, but a base for tourists to stay and explorer the amazing plains around. So unlike Nyaung U where the boat pulled in, and Nyaung Shwe at Inle Lake, where those towns were pre-existing villages with tourism tacked on it, New Bagan is a fresh and nicely balanced town that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed staying at.

I’m not sure if this is a New Bagan thing, but it’s the only time I’ve seen it is here, is the word “tourist”. Nowhere else in Myanmar is the word used, we’re always referred to as foreigners. When paying for entrance fees, it’s always “foreigner fee”. Yet here, I saw a sign that would normally tell locals to “be kind/welcome to foreigners” everywhere else, but here it actually said “May I help tourists”. I was kind of humanising in way, being called a foreigner all the time is strangely off putting.

There are several temples around New Bagan that are easily discovered by foot rather than the ubiquitous E-Bike that everyone uses to get around (the locals are even using them over petrol motorbikes). The explorer in me revealed in this, just being able to walk down a road, see a temple in the distance, and just walking down some random dirt path that may or may not lead to where you think you’re going. It’s just so fun and adventurous, and occasionally strangely surprising.

In once instance I was wandering down a path, farming fields to my left as locals tended to the crops, and I came across the entrance to a temple. It was a good photo opportunity, so taking the photo of the archway I noticed in the viewfinder some movement. Lowering my camera, just through there archway, a phalanx of puppies stood watching me. As soon as they knew I had noticed them, they charged forward. Now, when about 10 puppies are running towards you, you don’t think much other than, AWW PUPPIES!

This was the Puppy Mafia. Like the real Mafia where they have a habit of taking fingers, these puppies where hell bend on taking my toes. These little fur balls surrounded me and took turns lunging at my feet, small cute fangs snapping at exposed toes, and I had no choice but to retreat. Yes, I ran from a horde of puppies.

I had downloaded the GPS map app for my phone, called Maps.ME. This was the most invaluable tool in Bagan, as not only does it show all the back streets (ie. dirt paths) that no travel guide or tourist map show, it also has crowd sourced locations of temples and places to eat. I can’t recommend this app enough, it’s utterly brilliant and was my go to planning guide for where I ended up travelling in my time here. And since it uses GPS, it was perfect for finding your way around all the paths and not getting lost.

That’s not to say it’s without fault. One path I was walking down ended at a concrete and barbed wire fence. However I saw another path off to the side and started down that, which took me to at first a rubbish dump, then a cemetery, and finally back to the highway.

That first day of simply wandering around dirt paths with no real purpose or direction, other than I think I saw a temple is over there, and it was utterly fantastic. The explorer in me was thrilled.

With the surrounding area of New Bagan explored, it was time to ready myself for the next day, and learning to ride an Electric Motorbike (E-Bike). I was a little apprehensive of this, considering I don’t drive and have never ridden a bike outside of a BMX when I was a kid.

The rest of Bagan awaited, and tomorrow I’d learn what freedom on your own wheels was like.