Hugging the courses of the Irrawaddy River deep in the heart of rural Myanmar, Bagan’s temple tops shoulder their way above the sporadic groves of thit si trees and grass plains that now pepper this ancient cradle of Burmese civilisation. From the 9^th century AD onwards, this wondrous conglomeration of stupas and peaked pagodas was a nerve centre of life and culture, home to the reigning Pagan kings who first united the lands between Khmer, Siam and India in the west. Today, Bagan unsurprisingly figures as one of the nation’s prime historical attractions, and visitors flock in from Mandalay and Yangon to spy out the glowing towers of sights like the Ananda Temple, the shimmering Shwezigon Pagoda dressed in gold and the terracotta terraces of the Dhammayazika Pagoda alike. Bagan tour guides can make sightseeing more interesting by offering visitors options of bikes or even horse drawn carts around the temples and silhouettes of mighty stupas And when the murals and plaques adorning the insides of Bagan’s pagodas and monasteries have been examined, make the trip to nearby villages like Myin Ka Ba, where the locals have been crafting unique bamboo lacquer work for centuries.