Rudyard Kipling made Mandalay famous with his poem called “Mandalay”, published in 1892. During the third Anglo-Burmese war of 1885, 9,000 British and Indian soldiers had been transported by a fleet of paddle steamers (“the old flotilla” of the poem) and other boats 700 km from Rangoon to Mandalay.  For the poem lovers you can find the full poem at:  http://www.arctracer.com/poems/Mandalay.html.

On the Road to Mandalay was also a song published in 1907 and sung by many people over the years, including Frankie Laine, Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby.

My initial impressions of Mandalay:  a city of motorcycles, but manageable traffic compared to Yangon. At least the traffic moves steadily here although you are constantly dodging the motorbikes and cycles.

 

Our tour today included a visit to the Mahamuni Pagoda, which features a statue of Buddhas that is covered with over 15 cm of gold leaf, some 5 tons, according to our guide. At today’s price for gold that statue is worth some $194 million dollars. This is one of the most venerated images in Myanmar.

We also stopped at a gold leaf business where the extremely thin sheets of gold leaf are produced by men using simple tools to beat the gold into gold leaf, that worshippers place on statues of Buddha as an offering. A quick stop at a wood carving and embroidery business also occurred. Everything is done by hand. Somehow we managed to do a little souvenir shopping along the way.

 

Lunch was a bit different as we went to a Chinese restaurant that specializes in duck rather than the traditional Burmese fare. We looked forward to the change although dessert was still fruit!  We began to miss our good old fashioned sweets.

 

After lunch we visited several of the cities most interesting temples and palaces. The most unique one was the Shwenandaw Kyaung monastery, also known as the Golden Palace Monastery. This Buddhist monastery was originally part of the Royal Palace in Amarapura and moved to Mandalay in 1878.  It is made entirely of intricately carved teak with walls carved with tales of previous Buddhas. It is very different from anything we had seen so far.

Another fascinating site we visited was the Kuthodaw Pagoda. I must relate that when we hear we are going to another Buddha shrine we think it will be yet another statue of Buddha and if you have seen one, you have seen them all. However, we continued to be amazed how different each of these sites were.  The Kuthodaw Pagoda is unique in that it is the site of the world’s largest book. The main golden stupa is 188 feet high, but what makes the site so unique is that the stupa is surrounded by 729 “kyauksa gu” or stone-inscription caves, each containing a marble slab inscribed on both sides with a page of text from the of entire scriptures of Theravadan Buddhism.

Next was a visit to the Kyauktawgyi Pagoda. The chief feature of the Kyauktawgyi Paya is the huge (37 feet tall) seated Buddha figure sculpted from a single block of pale green marble from the Sagyin quarry twelve miles north of Mandalay. It was said that about 10 thousand men took about 2 weeks to transport the stone block from the Ayeyarwaddy River to the site where it is today.

By this time it was nearing sunset and we were transported by van to the top (230 meters above sea level) of Mandalay Hill. The true devotee would climb the 1,729 steps (barefooted) to the top!  The view from the pagoda at the top is a 360 degree view of the valley below. Scattered on the hillside below the summit are other temple complexes with their stupas and pagodas. It was somewhat cloudy when we were at the top and rather than wait the extra 30 minutes for the true sunset we opted to call it a day and retreat to our hotel, located at the base of the hill. We were ready to call it a day.