Bicycling Myanmar Offers Views of Beauty and Challenges

Joe Robinson wrote a story, recently, for the Los Angeles Times Travel Section, about Touring this country ( AKA Burma ), including on a bicycle, and witnessing the beauty, and challenges of this country.

He visited Bagan, exploring the temples on a rented girl’s bicycle with a leopard-print seat:

My body was already a waterfall, and it was only 10:15 a.m. in the oven of Bagan, former imperial capital of Myanmar. Standing on the pedals of my rented one-speed girl's bike with a leopard-print seat, I dripped up an incline, passed a couple of bullocks on death's door pulling an ancient wooden cart and then swerved off the asphalt into sand as an air-conditioned bus filled with grinning foreign tourists blew by.

The backdraft stirred up a storm of dry-season dust, and as it settled, I could make out a surreal spectacle from the top of the rise: a sea of otherworldly steeples dancing in the heat waves—some conical, others topped with doughnut-shaped rings, some with glinting golden umbrellas, some sculpted into immense bells. Despite the heat, it was not a mirage. The sci-fi skyline is the legacy of a mysterious building boom that turned this central Burmese savanna astride the Irrawaddy River into one of Asia’s most sprawling but least-known extravaganzas of religious architecture.

The full article: All that glitters is not gold in Myanmar's political landscape -Aug. 7th.

A Tip of the Hat to World Hum!