Nga Dat Kyi Pagoda Festival
Sagaing, once a royal capital, is to the west of Mandalay. It spreads along both sides of the Ayeyarwady. When first I came to Myanmar the enormously long and very elderly bridge was too frail for trucks: they had to be shipped across on massive barges.
The hills above Sagaing are dotted with over a thousand golden spires of paya (pagoda), zedi (solid brick stupa), monasteries and nunneries (never called convents in Myanmar) and visitors from all over the world come here to study and to meditate.
At festival time, both sides of the four entrance ways to a paya are lined with stalls selling everything one could possibly want, from full-size farming utensils to toy helicopters and Angry Birds. The crowds jostle us upward to where the gigantic white statue of Gawdama, the last Buddha, smiles down on us. Outside the paya there was no solemnity. A large tent was lined with chairs soon to be occupied by spectators at a boxing match. Here they don’t use boxing gloves: just bare fists or wrapped in bandages - possibly if they hadn’t done too well at the last match. In other parts of the grounds were roundabouts, a ferris wheel and a jumping castle. There was one exhibit that was very sad to see. In a large enclosure were a dozen or so tiny cages. Inside one was a pheasant, in another a porcupine. There were guinea pigs and rats, a lizard and two python. The really heartbreaking cage held a giant Hornbill with the huge bony casque above its bill all but touching the wires of the cage. We did not linger there, but went to walk beside the river.
Sagaing, once a royal capital, is to the west of Mandalay. It spreads along both sides of the Ayeyarwady. When first I came to Myanmar the enormously long and very elderly bridge was too frail for trucks: they had to be shipped across on massive barges.
The hills above Sagaing are dotted with over a thousand golden spires of paya (pagoda), zedi (solid brick stupa), monasteries and nunneries (never called convents in Myanmar) and visitors from all over the world come here to study and to meditate.
At festival time, both sides of the four entrance ways to a paya are lined with stalls selling everything one could possibly want, from full-size farming utensils to toy helicopters and Angry Birds. The crowds jostle us upward to where the gigantic white statue of Gawdama, the last Buddha, smiles down on us.
Outside the paya there was no solemnity. A large tent was lined with chairs soon to be occupied by spectators at a boxing match. Here they don’t use boxing gloves: just bare fists or wrapped in bandages - possibly if they hadn’t done too well at the last match. In other parts of the grounds were roundabouts, a ferris wheel and a jumping castle. There was one exhibit that was very sad to see. In a large enclosure were a dozen or so tiny cages. Inside one was a pheasant, in another a porcupine. There were guinea pigs and rats, a lizard and two python. The really heartbreaking cage held a giant Hornbill with the huge bony casque above its bill all but touching the wires of the cage. We did not linger there, but went to walk beside the river.
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