It's been raining, often torrentially, off and on again today--we think the tail end of a large typhoon that rolled across Vietnam several days ago. This is not the rainy season, though the farmers certainly welcome the moisture. It's quite beautiful watching the clouds surging across the sky, sometimes letting the sun through, sometimes dumping rain.
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| Golden Buddha |
Today, we visited a large and quite magnificent temple before we left Bagan for Mt. Popa, center of nats, the animist spirits who inhabit virtually everything and still maintain the fear and loyalty of much of the Burmese population. The temple hosts 4 huge, 30 foot high, Buddhas, wrapped in gold leaf. Two are original to the 12th century and 2 are replacements for Buddhas that burned centuries ago. Beneath the gold is beautifully carved teak, showing the flowing folds of the Buddha's garments and, in one case, different expressions on the Buddha's face as you move closer to or farther away from the figure. The temple has some of the best paintings we've seen, but sadly, the government covered over many of the elaborate frescoes with lime, ostensibly to protect them, but actually damaging many beyond repair. They did this after sanctions started in the late 1970's and UNESCO, which had been responsible for preserving these international treasures, pulled out of Myanmar.
A small and very old temple next door has magnificent and beautifully preserved 12th century frescoes, ranging from scenes of daily life in villages and the royal palace to elaborately decorated ceilings. No photos allowed here, which is a good thing since flash photography can damage the paint.
Burma is a land of temples, many with gold domes and golden Buddhas inside. Some, like the ones we saw today, are beautifully painted inside. Many have fallen into ruin, but thousands and thousands are visited daily by Burmese Buddhists. Besides Buddhist temples, there are also shrines to the nats. Many Burmese people, particularly in the villages, believe that everything is inhabited by spirits. We watched one young man pray to the nat occupying the palm tree he was about to climb before he climbed the tree, asking for a safe ascent and a prolific harvest of palm juice.
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| Mt. Popa |
Mt. Popa is an extinct volcano, 5000 feet high, that is a center of nat worship. We climbed nearly 800 steps to the top of a volcanic mountain to see a number of shrines to nats in a series of temples, covered with gold, and perched atop the cliffs. As usual, you remove your shoes and socks before entering the temples, in this case, near the bottom of the 771 steps. On our return, fortunately, there were lots of wipes to clean the mud and dirt off our feet. A problem if you're overly fastidious, but worth it if you want to see these remarkable structures and statues.
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| Palm Liquor Still |
On our way, we stopped at a palm factory. The palm trees here produce a sap that is turned into a very sweet and quite delicious candy. Some of the sap, or juice, is fermented and distilled into a powerful palm liquor that tastes like white lightning, only a little tastier. The villagers use all parts of the tree--trunks of dead trees for posts to hold up their roofs, leaves for thatch roofs and many kinds of ornaments, and sap for food and drink. The trees produce after 10 years and survive another 30, so are a very important asset to families. When a palm tree is 10 years old, a family will plant another palm in order to make sure they always have a tree. There are ladders running up the trees, in 2 sections. The bottom section is taken down at night to keep neer-do-wells' from stealing the tree's treasures.
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| Nats at Mt. Popa |
The road from Bagan to Mt. Popa is in bad shape, as are most of the roads here. River crossings are often flooded. We made one crossing in the heavy rain today as local villagers shoveled sand out of the way. But, there was little water in the crossing. The government does not have the funds to care for all the roads, so they contract out maintenance to private companies that charge tolls along the way in order to pay for the repairs and make a profit. The road we traveled on today is very narrow, one lane mostly, paved, but full of holes.
Tomorrow we head to Mandalay. We have been having wonderful conversations with Burmese, who are very kind and generous. Everyone smiles as you walk by, and it's really genuine, because they smile at one another all the time also. Life is not easy, particularly for farmers who do not have the mechanized equipment we are used to, but there is much to enjoy and share in their lives, as they have been showing us.
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