We started our day nice and early and travelled through the high density traffic to the river dock half an hour away. As is always the case, the streets are full of monks wearing their maroon coloured capes and Buddhist nuns wearing a somewhat equivalent costume in pale pink. Both the men and women have shaved heads so its often only by their costume colour that one can identify the gender of the person seeking alms.
At the river dock we all scrambled down a steep and very dusty river bank and walked across a narrow plank to board our boat that was to take us up the Ayeyarwady River to Mingun.
The Ayeyarwady River, formerly called the Irrawaddy River has its headwaters in the Eastern Himalayas and travels around 2000 km to its delta on the Bay of Bengal. For thousands of years this vast river has served as a strategic link connecting China and the Indian Ocean. Numerous civilisations have developed along its banks and merchants for countless years have battled its currents to reach cities for which the river was a lifeline. Rudyard Kipling immortalised the river as the “Road to Mandalay”.
This is the dry season at present and the river at Mandalay is only one kilometre wide but during the monsoon season the river becomes a raging torrent many metres deeper and much wider.
The boat we were on took about half an hour to reach the up-river town of Mingun and from the boat the imposing structure of Mingun’s Incomplete Pagoda is awe inspiring.
We used a bullock drawn ancient wooden and bamboo taxi to get from the river to the pagoda site. The pagoda, commissioned by Bodawpaya in 1790 to house one of Buddha’s teeth, is incomplete but monumentally vast! Its base is a 70m square and the construction was curtailed when its height reached just on 50m. Had it been completed its stupa would have been even higher than the Great Pyramid of Egypt. A massive earthquake in 1839 reduced its upper parts to rubble and left huge cracks in the brick constructed sides.
Adjacent to the pagoda are two giant ruined chinthes (leogryphs) with their heads detached presumably by the 1839 earthquake.
A little further up the main road we encountered the Great Bell of Bagun. This bell, weighing 90 tonnes had to be floated into position via a specially built canal. It is made of bronze and was cast in 1808 for dedication to the nearby pagoda now in ruins.
To the north of the bell is the extraordinary Hsinbyume Pagoda built in 1816 by the grandson of Bodawpaya. Its wavy concentric terraces depict the mythical Mount Meru and the white building is capped with an impressive stupa said to be representing the seven ranges that encircle Meru.
We returned to Mandalay on our boat but with the current’s assistance the return journey was considerably quicker than the up-river travel this morning.
We had a lunch break in a local Mandalay tea-house where we shared a chapatti and lamb curry which cost the unbelievably cheap sum of AUD$0.65 so we tipped the waiter an additional amount almost equivalent to cost of the meal.
In the early afternoon we visited the site of the World’s Biggest Book. This exists within the grounds of the Kuthodaw Pagoda and was built by King Mindon in 1859. There are 729 marble stone slabs on which are inscribed the Buddhist Canon written in Sanskrit and each one housed in a white stupa.
At this location we had our cheeks adorned with thanakha paint. This is extracted from the thanakha tree’s wood by grinding the wood on a stone surface and the fine creamy paint thus formed is used commonly in Myanmar as a sunscreen.
We then moved to the remains of the Mandalay Palace which was practically destroyed by Japanese bombing during World War II. The splendour of the palace is now represented only by the remaining Shwenandaw Monastery which was transplanted to a new site nearby. The richly carved and formerly gilt structure built from teak is presently undergoing restoration, a task that seems near impossible considering the countless carvings that cover every façade of this impressive building.
To conclude the day’s activities we visited a small factory where the workers prepare gold leaf. This is done by perpetual hammering of gold until the foil is down to micrometres in thickness. This requires strength and persistence as the men doing the work used heavy hammers for long periods of time. The gold foil is ultimately used to ornament by gold covering Buddhist icons and other tourist items.
Tomorrow we leave Mandalay at an early hour and fly south to Bagan to continue this fascinating journey into the little known country of Myanmar.