Pagoditis - what is that supposed to be?

We will stay in Bagan for a whole nine days, we explain to the taxi driver who takes us to the hotel after our arrival, and we receive incredulous amazement. A reaction that accompanies us during our stay. Nine days are clearly 'too long', say the locals. Why actually? In Bagan, there are about 3,400 structures on 40 km2: stupas, monasteries, shrines..., most of them from the 11th to the 13th century. Old stuff also. Even in nine days, you can only visit a fraction of them. When driving through the landscape, the spires of the many brick buildings can be seen above the trees everywhere, like a forest of pagodas.

I know this reaction from travel reports on the internet. After at most three or four days, tourists usually have enough and start suffering from Pagoditis. Obviously, we are slower to catch on and only really begin to see what we are visiting after three days. Slowly, we recognize the details in the stucco decorations again. Gradually, we can understand how the architecture has changed over time - because it has, but our inexperienced eyes can only see it after a while.

There are also wall paintings in over 300 buildings, whose style and motifs mean absolutely nothing to us. But I also find it particularly amusing to visit frescoes in Europe, where I can read their stories like comics - where I recognize the saints and their legends. At least now I already know that Buddha was born from his mother Maya's right hip (already with crossed legs), while she leaned against her sister, standing (!). We can therefore recognize Buddha's birth, just as we can identify the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, donkey, and ox. Our headlamps make us even more noticeable than we Europeans already are here, but they serve us well in the mostly dark temples.

And then I can only absorb a limited amount of information per day: If I have explored eight buildings, that's enough for me, otherwise, I mix everything up - also because we are often on the road with the bike, so we also do a lot of unusual sports. A free afternoon (like today) is quite good for our stiff legs. The clay tablets with scenes from the life of Buddha from the early 11th century this morning were a hit and can continue to have an impact on the hotel balcony while drinking espresso from the Moka elettrica and reading George Orwell's 'Burmese Days'.