vaga #3/21 Fatty "b"
PART XXI
IN THIS CHAPTER THERE WILL BE MANY TEMPLES AND PAGODAS OF WHICH I DO NOT RECALL THEIR NAMES IN PARTICULAR, THERE WERE TOO MANY, I HAVE ONLY SHOWN A FEW, ALL ARE OUTSIDE Mandalay
It is important for me to share information about Fatty, and when I asked him if he had been in a monastery in his youth. He answered yes he was, and I asked him how was it? there was a long silence, his face saddened, and he told me: it was hard and difficult, with an expression on his face of almost pain. Now his two oldest children have been in a monastery since they were 17 and 19 years old and will be there for two years. What made him happy was that he was close by, and they could visit him on Sundays and that the brothers are together in the same monastery. Part of their culture, of their roots so alien, unknown and often misunderstood by me.
This chapter will be more of a photo gallery. I saw so much in those two days, and I was saturated, we could continue for a few more days because the number of monuments is beyond imagination. In each place we stopped, everything was majestic, dozens of images, all with their history and symbols and Fatty was proud and excited to share it with me.
One of the places we visited, was a tremendous mess, disorganised, not dirty, all its icons were huge, and it also had a monastery.
The last photo was of fat domes painted gold, it's a very small replica of an icon that is in the south of the country. The original is huge and covered in gold, where two hairs of Buddha are preserved, I didn’t get to visit it since I was leaving Myanmar, my visa was running out. I could have stayed another month happily.
then we stopped at an old royal palace and two ancient pagodas both in a state of complete destruction. There is something in me that makes me like the destroyed, the old, the peeled, the ruined, the passing of the years, you can smell and see history. They reflect its rise and good times. They are mystical, suggestive and the visual aspect of this attracts me, for example the bricks are worn out capriciously, depending on the sun, the wind and time. The 1975 earthquake was partly responsible for the destruction of hundreds of pagodas, palaces and monasteries which have never been restored.
The poster below made me laugh a lot, “take off your socks”, like the other one about not sleeping in the temples (Vietnam) here, you do sleep in the temples. I imagine that this sign was in prompt response to the liveliness of some to be able to withstand the boiling floors of the temples, they are not only pagodas, but also huge enclosures, with different altars, some with a monastery. Here, you walk barefoot, and it is far, in 40 degree heat, hitting, hammering the ceramic floors mercilessly. Travelling through them is practically impossible to bear during the hottest hours of the day. Always looking for shade, however thin or scarce it may be. But in reality, all you have to do is run, run hard until you reach shade or get inside a monument or pagoda. That is why the sock poster made me laugh, of course it saves your feet, and it is not once that you have to put up with it, Socks, how cool, I thought it was the idea of gringo boys pretending to be smart, I don't know why I came up with that. Many times when we crossed through these areas, be it a temple, a monastery or a palace, and sometimes all in one, he would run to look for my !!! sandals!!! because they stayed where we started the walk through, and he brought them to wherever I was. You cannot imagine the tremendous gesture and how much I valued it as well as the soles of my feet
I understood that taking off shoes when entering a temple is to leave the filth of the world outside the sacred place. Being in Sri Lanka in a small town, you had to take off your shoes to go to the supermarket …… …that really threw me off, there is no logic, reason or understanding to it, the first time I did it, although I doubtfully admit, when I came back the second time I did not take them off and played the tourist "understanding nothing."
This is an old royal palace, full of stories and there are many altars inside, with a study of the sunlight to illuminate each one at different times of the year and during the day. Several pagodas on the sides, domes, painted gold, others white, generating a particular atmosphere.
The photo below shows a few seconds of some places and their pagodas, they are just passing, it is to imagine the abundance of pagoda. That is why I needed a lot of time if I wanted to see them all.
Next the temple of Mandalay Sutaungpyei (literally wish-fulfilling) Pagoda, it was the last thing I visited with Fatty, we saved the best for last, the finishing touch. I remember we had to hurry to get to see the sunset ... I was on the motorbike behind him and I told him to RUSH, we needed to see the sunset forget I'm a tourist, and then he sped up, and I cracked up laughing hahaha. The sunsets of Myanmar are spectacular and nationally and touristically famous. It is the pick of any visit. You always have to be somewhere where you can appreciate it, and by everyone, apart from that the temperature drops and people appear. I am talking about the month of April, although it is repeated most of the year. It is a phenomenon that the sun turns into a suspended red ball, floating in slow motion before reaching its final sunset, during which you can watch it for as long as you want, the last half hour is the most amazing, you are possessed, hypnotised. There is a kind of fine and high mist that gets in the way, it is neither white nor grey, permanent during day and night, it is a natural phenomenon, it is not smog. The sun is beautiful, but you never see a star, as a counterpart and I miss the stars, generally because of the humidity, I hadn’t seen a star since I arrived here.
A pagoda of such beauty that my photos fall short, sometimes I just stay to contemplate and feel the atmosphere, rather than going crazy taking photos and lose the mystique that I feel, perhaps if you spent the day there you could do both. This pagoda is of a different beauty than seen before, being my favourite Kuothadaw Paya Vaga #3 Part I, (photo above) for its purity, neatness and minimalism, with its insistently clean white colour, where there is no way to get distracted and the touch of gold on its dome, one could say and rather I say, here it is the opposite. A great pagoda, with exquisite architecture, beautiful, with high refinement, with finesse that is endless in its elegance and sophistication, it is without equal. To put it in a nutshell, it is sublime. The place where it is located at the top of the hill, had to be special, it takes centre stage in the city. It has always been climbed on foot and there are 1,729 steps, it takes an hour to climb, today there is the option to get there by car. This temple was taken by the Japanese in the Second World War, and they knew that they could not be bombarded in that place because it was sacred, it was rescued by hand-to-hand fighting by the Gurkas, then the English took over. There is so much history in each one, be it religious, historical or social that I give a superficial description, I only relate what passed in front of my eyes and what my ears heard. Having more than ten Pagodas or Payas (which means the same thing) within this small city with the same levels of majesty and solemnity. To be more exact between 300 and 500 metres there are 4 tremendous pagodas. Maybe this is not gold, like the other one, but the interior refinement with the mosaic work is a masterpiece.
Its walls are covered in mosaics with geometric designs and with many small pieces of mirrors in crucial locations. These mosaics, in which mirrors distort reality, create new and non-existent spaces, distort planes, sparkle indiscriminately, they are illusions, they are playful, they are magical.
I finish with this photo it is not usual for me to be in them, but I want to give recognition to a person who earned all my respect and admiration for his nobility.