A Visit to Monywa, Myanmar

Yesterday was yet another day for us to remember always. It was really a memorable time visiting one of Myanmar’s most important pilgrimage sites, which includes the second tallest Buddha Statue in the world, the largest reclining Buddha images in the Country, the park with more than 1000 Buddha statues each under a Bodhi Tree and the amazing Thanbodday Pagoda with its more than 500,000 Buddha statues. Actually, Monywa is just one of many Burmese cities, but these mentioned three special places will certainly raise your eyebrows.

The Beautiful and elegant standing and reclining Buddha statues.

Starting our journey at 4:00am in the morning, we drove straight to the Bodhi-Tathaung, which houses the largest standing Buddha in the world, Laykyun Setkyar, at 127 m in height and nearby is the largest reclining Buddha image in Myanmar, at 100m long and 27m high. One can see them from miles away, and it is impressive to watch them get bigger and bigger as you draw closer and closer. Both the images are hollow. In the standing one, we can climb almost to the top floor (6-7 floors not finished yet). We passed through beautiful colors and paintings climbing higher and higher… We went up to the 27th floor (there is 33 floors and the last five was not accessible) barefoot. As it is the month of April and the temperature outside was very much high and you can only imagine how the situation would be inside and that too climbing up to 27 floor with stairs (No lift). A giant sitting Buddha statue is also in the process of building very near to it...

The Thousand Buddha’s statues each under the sacred Bodhi trees

The Thousand Buddha’s statues each under the sacred Bodhi trees

Not far from the giant Buddha statues, there is an ancient park with thousands Buddha's statues under the sacred Bodhi trees, Being able to enjoy a one-thousand Bodhi trees with Buddha images together in one place within one’s eyesight is a moment which will never fades away and from there we can see the elegant standing and reclining Buddha statues as well.

View of Thanboddhay Pagoda

Front view of Thanboddhay Pagoda

A Closer view of Thanboddhay Pagoda

After that, we visited the Thanboddhay Pagoda, a huge temple covered with more than half a million Buddha images from big down to tiny! Every inch of the structure, exterior as well as interior, is covered with these Buddha images. There are many big statues, but the majorities are little statues decorates every wall, archway and niche of the temple. They are not all immediately obvious, but when you start looking more closely, you can see the small white statues everywhere.

We arrived back around 10:30 am and after having lunch, every one of us had a good rest after the long, tiring but memorable visit to Monywa.

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