Bicycles in Bagan

What if I told you I was into Legos? I mean, really into Legos. Like, I spend my weekends building medieval palaces with other Lego enthusiasts and sometimes pop an airport or two together before work? And I subscribe to magazines about Legos and have a bunch of apps on my phone that track how many green rectangles I've used this month and how much time I've spent building my own blocky little Death Star? Also, I spend thousands of dollars on cutting-edge carbon fiber Legos which are super strong and much lighter than regular Legos, and I've even bought these special gloves to reduce pinching and subcutaneous soreness during the really grueling marathon building sessions?

Wouldn't you find this very, very odd?

~

Say what you will about cardiovascular fitness and carbon footprints, but bicycles are a deeply flawed mode of rural transportation. Slower than motorcycles and less relaxing than a leisurely stroll, they are rendered nearly useless by sand, hills, loose gravel, and a thousand other things you are very likely to encounter outside the city. Spending an hour astride their narrow seats is like visiting an amateur proctologist. The whole 'cycling keeps you fit' argument only works if you ignore the rows of human manatees pedaling futilely away in fitness clubs around the globe. And nobody looks good in spandex except people too self-respecting to wear spandex.

In fact the only people who don't look ridiculous on bicycles are children, which is mostly because children are so generally ridiculous that a bike isn't going to make much difference. But as an adult, cycling requires a Herculean effort of will to suppress the very reasonable suspicion that you look like an ass.

~

One morning in Bagan, a small town in central Myanmar, I was thinking about bicycles. I had a strong feeling I would soon be spending lots of time atop one. This made me deeply unhappy.

Bagan is famous for its temples, which sprawl for miles in every direction along the banks of the Ayeyarwaddy River. The landscape is  Martian - endless stretches of parched reddish soil,  dusty patches of scraggly brush trees, occasional swirls of thick brown dust. By sunup a suffocating haze settles over the place and temperatures exceed 100°F / 38°C. Before you've had your first coffee, Bagan is a blast furnace.

About the temples - there's a lot of them. And they're spread out across the 13 x 8 km Bagan Archeological Zone. Most backpackers stay in the small hamlet of Nyaung U, while both Old Bagan and New Bagan are home to extravagant luxury resorts catering to rich Chinese and European tourists. Although Myanmar's tourism industry is nascent, the government has made a strong effort to brand Bagan as a classier Angkor Wat, without the Pub Streets and marijuana pizza. For the chic and sophisticated* traveler, Bagan offers every indulgence from exotic thanaka facials to teakwood bus tours to sunrise balloon rides.

*Rich.

The rest of us get bicycles.

~

Backpackers like me are stuck with bicycles as their primary mode of transportation in Bagan. Air-conditioned minibuses or private cars are prohibitively expensive and foreign tourists are forbidden to rent motorbikes, per government decree. The official reason, according to the pleasant round-faced woman who owned our guesthouse, was concern about inexperienced riders damaging ancient structures or injuring themselves. Reasonable enough, but more nefarious theories abound. One is that the surrounding countryside is still wracked by ethnic turmoil the government prefers to keep quiet. Myanmar's military junta has an extensive track record of brutality and it's not difficult to imagine this being true, though the political climate has improved considerably in the past few years.

Another popular, less genocide-y theory suggests the real culprits are the horse cart cabal, a jovial gang of geriatric scallywags who promise a romantic carriage ride around the temples for an exorbitant fee. From personal experience, I can tell you that a horse cart ride is enjoyable for exactly two and a half minutes before the snail-like pace and rickety wooden seats become torturous. As an added bonus, each cart is equipped with a large canvas bag to catch the giant steaming turds these poor beasts drop with alarming frequency, which then attract a staggering number of enormously fat black flies. It's clearly an industry in need of a competitive advantage.

So for penny-pinching equinophobes, the options for getting around Bagan are limited. The sheer size of the temple fields make exploring on foot impossible - you could walk for hours without stumbling across anything noteworthy. The scorching heat and choking dust are equally strong deterrents to an afternoon constitutional.

The solution, according to Lonely Planet? Bicycles - the perfect way to explore the temple ruins and get some exercise while you're at it! With a trusty guesthouse map and a few bottles of water, you can see it all for only a dollar a day! You'll be helping the environment and working up a healthy appetite for dinner...what could be better?

Well, a motorbike. A motorbike would be better.

~

We arrived in Bagan on an ancient overnight bus from Yangon, the old southern colonial capital. Like most overnight buses in Myanmar, this one concluded its journey at the hideous hour of 4 am. When I stumbled off the bus, red eyed and irritable, I was followed by Aron. Aron was a large, friendly Indian-American man from Michigan. He'd barely made it on the bus after a last second dash to the airport for his lost (and, later, found) luggage. Which meant I'd been only moments away from having two seats to myself for the ten hour bus ride, an unheard of luxury in Southeast Asia. I like to imagine that I hid my disappointment when he managed to flag down the bus and climb aboard, but it's doubtful. Unfortunately for him, Aron's friendliness mattered far less to me than his largeness. It was a long, elbowy, mouth-breathing trip.

At the bus station we were met by our Aussie friend Tom. He'd arrived even earlier than us, but he'd splurged for the VIP luxury bus with its ample legroom and moist towelettes. He looked fresh-faced and energetic, far more youthful than his fifty-odd years. Despite the early hour he was bright and chipper. I wanted to punch him.

'Push bikes!' he exclaimed happily, gesturing at the ridiculous contraption beneath him. 'Got 'em right next t' the guesthouse, only cost ya a dolla, lovely old man in the little shop. You ride push bikes back home, Aron?' The big American nodded enthusiastically and I wanted to punch him too, before I suppressed my homicidal instincts and threw my bags onto the nearest horse cart. As we slowly clomped down the road I felt like a man going to his own execution. The thought of martyrdom cheered me up a bit.

Once we'd arrived at May Ka Lar Guesthouse and carefully tossed our belongings into various corners, Tom explained his plan for the day. He'd pinched a map from reception and began circling points of interest with alarming vigor. I noticed that many of Tom's circles looked quite far from each other and fought the urge to weep.

Our first stop, Tom declared, was Ananda Paya, one of the largest temples in Bagan. He told us it was a fine place to spot the hot air balloons that float above the temples at sunrise. We could climb to the top and photograph the hell out of the whole panoramic scene. Since it wasn't yet 5 am, we had plenty of time for coffee and breakers, and maybe a quick search for Wi-Fi (Tom had investments). Aron was delighted and minutes later I found myself on a bicycle for the first time since junior high.

You may never forget how to ride a bike, but Mother Nature is not impressed by your powers of recall. 'So you remember how to pedal, eh?' she gloats, tapping her fingers together sinisterly, 'Let's see you push that thing up a sandy hill in face-melting heat.' By the time we reached Ananda Paya, the bicycle and I were waging a war of wills I was destined to lose. Thanks to Tom's very inaccurate guesthouse map, we'd been following a thin spiderweb of obscure dirt paths through viciously dusty terrain. Our slim tired Chinese city bikes were constantly stuck in sand drifts, much to the annoyance of the rider who then had to hop off and carry the stupid thing to firmer ground. As we climbed the temple steps I noticed that both Tom and Aron were panting heavily. At their age, in this heat...? I was suddenly thankful for my emergency first response training, until I remembered that I didn't remember any of it.

Happens every day.

After we snapped our obligatory sunrise balloon shots and scowled at the noisy Chinese tourists obstructing our view, the Bagan Death March continued. Slowly and laboriously we pedaled past lacquerware workshops, gleaming white resort spas, and the famous temples. So, so many temples. Endless clusters of temples, isolated clumps of buildings in barren fields baking in the heat. Sun-bleached tents of sandpainting hawkers and coconut vendors surrounded the bigger ones, piles of sandals outside the front gates a clear indicator of a particular temple's popularity.

I began to understand the appeal of the hot balloons. Bagan is best observed from above, where the spectacular sprawl of over two thousand temples can be taken in at once, the mind appropriately blown by sheer architectural profligacy. Viewed individually on the ground, the temples have a bland uniformity thanks to years of lazy, underfunded restoration. The vast majority were rebuilt with dull orangish bricks and a singular disregard for craftsmanship or historical accuracy. They seemed old but not impressively so, the way a 1990s living room would seem dated while failing to trigger any nostalgia. I felt inexplicably embarrassed by the shoddiness of the work - a rich cultural marvel like Bagan deserved better.

Good from afar, but far from good?

Still, the payas had their charms. Some of the smaller ones were completely unvisited and you could sit quietly in front of the large Buddha statues at each entrance until the gatekeeper came to sell you sandalwood figurines. The cool stone floors and dark passageways were welcome relief from the blazing sun outside. At the larger temples herds of Burmese pilgrims swept through on breakneck tours as if they hoped to see all two thousand in a single day. We took photos with bold children and beaming old men, trying to hide our surprise every time a saffron robed monk whipped out his iPhone for one more shot. Despite the hordes of vendors and piles of unsightly garbage, the payas of Bagan exerted an undeniable spiritual attraction. The Burmese pilgrims, most from big cities like Mandalay and Yangon, seemed delighted to make the journey and quite sincere in their reverence, even if they did spend most of their visit snapping pictures with their smartphones and stuffing money into omnipresent collection boxes. They laughed at my inexpertly tied longyi, but it was all in good fun. I liked the Burmese immensely.

Which was good, because the bike was slowly crushing my spirit one kilometer at a time. Earlier in the day I'd controlled my frustration by humming vulgar, cathartic verses about how much I fucking loathed bicycles and imagining myself throwing the awful thing beneath an oncoming bus. However, by the afternoon I was a broken, dead-eyed husk of a man. I gazed after each passing motorbike with desperate longing and massaged my aching quadriceps with a lunatic's intensity at every stop. I answered all of Tom and Aron's questions with a weak smile and, 'Sure, sounds good,' a deference which I hoped would convey the terrible injustice of my situation yet seemed to go completely unnoticed. My clothes were drenched with sweat and my hair was a soppy, neck-sticking mess. Eventually I was too exhausted even for self pity. The bike had won.

~

At sundown we rode back to the guesthouse, Tom and Aron chattering excitedly about refreshing showers and icy Myanmar beer. I pedaled lackadaisically behind them, coasting as long as possible before gravity and inertia compelled my legs to pump again. We arrived at the front gates just as the air began to turn cool. I wiped the dust from my face and wheeled the cursed bike to the old man next door. He smiled broadly at me as he pinched the tires and squeezed the handbrakes.

'You rent again tomorrow?' he asked, gently parking the bike next to the others lined up in his shop.

'Yeah'.

Goddamnit.