Incredible India!

This is India!

A picnic in the park ....ing lot dumpsite, Haridwar
(See how at peace the cows, pigs and chicken are with each other...)

India, this is too, ....incredible huh?

Pipalkoti, Garhwal, North India

What happened to Shwedagon Paya

Shwedagon Paya, Yangon (Rangoon)

OK, here’s a pic of the famed Shwedagon in all it’s glory, ….bound by bamboo-scaffolding and getting cleaned and regilded. Not many people have the privilege of seeing it in this state since this happens only once every 4 years, so I should consider myself lucky right? If you wanna see it as it's shown in the tourist brochures etc, all gilded up in gold, you’d best wait for another 5 months or so.

...maybe by that time, my postcard would also have arrived.


A temple bell in Shwedagon Paya

If I'm not mistaken, this is supposed to be the 3rd largest uncracked bell in the world. Myanmar must have a thing with uncracked bells, they also have the largest and the 2nd largest. I have pics of all 3, but I figured that'll be a bell too many huh?

The God of Saturdays

A shrine in Shwedagon Paya, Yangon

Here’s a pic of devotees bathing their daily deity (I think this one’s for Saturday, since that statuette there looks like a Naga). Myanmese have a deity for each day of the week except Wednesdays. They have 2 for Wednesdays, one for the morning and one for the evening. Each deity is symbolized by a creature, mine’s a Garuda since I was born on a Sunday. What you have to do is to bathe your deity as many times as the years you were in existence (I didn’t do it coz I’d have to do it 35 times! And besides, I’m Christian hehehe), then you kneel and bow a few times and end it with some strikes to the temple bell. I guess it’s to improve your fortune, but don’t quote me.

Shadow-Walking

On the roof of Pahtothamya, Bagan

This picture was taken by a small boy on the roof of a temple in Bagan. Roaming around the roofs of temples in the afternoon in Bagan is quite fun. First, there’s hardly a soul around, second you learn the trick of shadow-walking i.e. walking on whatever shadows you find so that you don’t burn the bejesus outta the soles of your feet (notice how restless my feet are). The sun-baked roof had no effect on the boy’s feet so he was kinda taking his own sweet time to snap this pic, that little rascal!

More Temples of Bagan

More temples of Bagan, from the roof of Pahtothamya


Even more temples, Nyein Gon Paya, Bagan

The Biggest Pile of Brick Rubble on Earth

Ok here’re some more pics to let everyone know that I’ve not actually forgotten about this blog. It’s just that I’ve been somewhat busy (and terribly lazy). And as a picture speaks a thousand words, guess these pics will have to suffice for the time being, until I get my inspiration rolling again. Conducting interviews really ain’t very inspiring. Repeating the same bloody thing to each and every interviewee is not really that fun (especially when they’re all guys hehehe).


Mingun Paya, near Mandalay

Mingun is a small village about an hour’s ride on the boat along the Ayeyarwaddy River (Irrawaddy in British times) from Mandalay. Mingun Paya was supposed to be the base of the world’s largest stupa (if the king who wanted it built hadn’t died before it was completed). And it’s cracked on all sides due to earthquakes (Myanmar’s right smack in earthquake zone). So what you’ll get is a towering cube-shaped monolith with large menacing cracks on the walls and huge doorways like some doomed crumbling temple.

The above pic was my best effort at capturing it on film. Don’t think I did such a bad job huh? At least it still looks like a great big heap of bricks. The photo in Lonely Planet looks fabulous, a towering monstrosity of a crumbling temple with red-robed monks in the foreground framed by a deep blue sky. Another photo I saw had a red robed monk posing at the side of a monstrous crack on the wall. Now, if only I had red-robed monks (instead of 2 enthusiastic Czech traveling buddies) in my photo, if only the sky was of a deeper blue, if only the sun had shone where it was supposed to shine, if only I had Fuji film instead of Kodak, if only my camera was a better one, etc… I’m sure I could get a photo as good as the ones I saw...