This is what happens when you have a group of photographers on a photo trip. They would fire away at any scene or object that has the potential to make a good photographic image, regardless of whether or not it has any historical or cultural significance.

We were heading for the Dhammayangyi Temple when someone in the group spotted this woman burning some grass in a small field off the road. The whole group disembarked from the bus, and fired away at the scene with our cameras. In the process, we attracted a number of foreign tourists over as well, who walked across to find out what was happening and what we were photographing. I bet they thought we were a bunch of crazy people!

But the smoke from the fire caught the light of the early afternoon sun, and provided a whimsical contrast to the near silhouette of the woman and shed in the foreground and the faint outline and form of the pagodas in the background, all framed at the top by the leaves of the overhanging tree. It was, as far as I am concerned, an evocative image of the hot and dusty plains of Bagan, dotted with thousands of temples, pagodas and other religious structures that have survived hundreds of years from the First Burmese Empire in the 11th to 13th centuries.