Bagan

Burma has been described as ' the land of breathtaking beauty and charm yet only recently emerging into the modern world'. Nowhere is this more evident than around Bagan, an area of 49 square miles (7x7)and the site of a staggering 3,200 pagodas, previously the 11th century home of an estimated 200,000 people. One can only imagine what it must have looked like with all the villages, crops and animals interspersed with these incredible structures in prime condition.

Not only are they breathtaking from the outside but inside many of them were painted floor to (very high) ceiling with Buddha stories in intricate detail, we spent the first day wandering in a horse cart, there are a few temples which you can climb and see probably a thousand pagodas.

Bagan is quite different from Angkor, where everything was laid out on a grid (in the middle of the jungle) here there is no pattern and they are randomly scattered, sometimes quite close to each other. As we sat at dinner overlooking the river we enthused about an extraordinary day.