Ballooning over Bagan

It is black when we wake, and we put on all our layers under the fluorescent light of our hotel room, bundling up to ward off the nip of the early morning air. A bus picks us up and takes us to a nearby field full of hurried activity. Men are scurrying about, spreading out large swaths of shadowed fabric across the grass. Oversized wicket baskets—which soon will contain us—lie on their sides, and mangy mutts sniff them, then turn to us. As we watch the gas canisters fire up, flames shooting into the inky air, the ground staff serve us tea and coffee, biscuits that leave crumbs nosed over by the dogs. We are going flying this morning, in the most fantastical storybook way—by hot air balloon.

Before we know it the fabric on the ground is puffing and rising, slowly forming itself into the shape of an oversized balloon. There are eight of them, and their dark red color fills the brightening sky above us. They are tethered to the baskets, which are now upright, beckoning us to hop in. First, we receive a safety briefing, instructions for takeoff and landing. Then we are given the signal, and we clamber over the basket’s sides, like kids tumbling into a laundry hamper. Our balloon captain, who hails from Sussex, England, fires up the cylinder, the crew unties our ground ropes, and seamlessly—we are off. The ground crew, smiling and waving, becomes smaller beneath us as we go up, up and up into the smoky pink morning air.  When we are at ‘cruising altitude’, the captain shuts of the flame, and we are caught off guard by the lovely silence, the noiseless floating. We and our neighboring balloons are suspended in the air by what feels like magic, a conjurer’s trick. Below us, Burmese families are waking, taking their morning tea, hopping on rusty bicycles, pedaling to and fro. A few glance up at us, waving, bemused looks on their faces. They have seen it before, these crazy tourists, paying astronomical amounts for aerial views of their sacred temples, their national heritage. We rise higher, the flame shooting up again, and now we hover above the first edifice in a sea of temples, strewn across the grassy dry landscape. It’s strangely a bit like being on safari, only instead of spotting the grey lumbering bodies of elephants, we are ogling the spires and crumbling walls of Bagan’s Buddhist temples, built by an overzealous convert, Bamar King Anawrahta, in the 11^th century. They are all sizes—some massive and reaching to the sky, others like part of a miniature figurine set. (Later we learn that over 4,000 temples were built here over a 230 year period, until Mongol invasions in 1287). They are linked by dusty roads, crisscrossed with horse cart and bicycle tracks, some made by us the previous day during our “e-scooter” explorations.

The sun is reaching higher now and the light’s color continues to shift, becoming more yellow, burning through some of the smoke from village fires that continues to hang in the air. We snap pictures, both of the temples and of the seven other suspended balloons. It is hard to say which is the more interesting perspective, the timeless landscape below us, or the flying contraptions around us, their old-world charm captivating, enchanting. We float on but the hour passes quickly and soon we find ourselves descending, instructed to take the “brace position.” We crouch down, aware that our captain is performing some tricky maneuvering. We feel our balloon lower, then rise, then lower again and swipe against a prickly tree with a THWACK! Our hearts beat, and then with a quick relatively painless thump, we have landed, safely. We emerge out of our basket and are greeted with champagne, juice, and homemade banana bread and croissants. We toast to our aerial adventure, our birds-eye view of Bagan, our magical morning.