Touring the cities of Amarapura, Innwa and Sagaing

We spent our second day in Mandalay heading out of town to visit the 3 cities of Amarapura, Innwa and Sagaing. The best way to do this is to hire a taxi for the day. It's pretty cheap...I think we paid about $40 and had the guy for 8 hours.

We left the hotel at 8:30am and headed to the Mahamuni Buddha temple, which is one of the most important Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Burma.

The temple houses the Mahamuni Buddha image, the most highly revered Buddha image in the country. The pagoda was built in 1785 by King Bodawpaya of the Konbaung dynasty after the Mahamuni image was captured during the invasion of the Arakan Kingdom.


The Mahamuni image is enshrined in a small chamber topped with a seven tiered Pyatthat Burmese style roof. The Mahamuni, which means the Great Image is seated on a very ornate 1.80 meters high pedestal. The image  is 3.80 meters high and weighs about 6½ tons.

To pay respect to the Buddha image, male devotees apply gold leaf to the image, which is called shwe cha in Burmese. As a result, the Mahamuni Buddha is covered with a thick layer of gold leaf of about 15 centimeters, which has distorted the shape of the image. 
There is a ritualistic cleaning and polishing at 4am...the hotel suggested we go to this and we laughed out loud! haha

Several old photos of the image in the temple show the difference in the outline of the image between about a century ago and now. Scotty was able to go in and check it out but no women allowed unfortunately...stupid ovaries. 

We stopped in for a quick visit to Mahar Gandaryon Monastery where you can observe ways of life of Monks. Every day at 9:30am, all 1300 of them march into the dining hall for their only meal of the day and you can stand to the side to watch.

Next stop was Sagaing hill.

Sagaing was the royal capital for only three years before nearby Inwa took over in 1764, but it remains an important spiritual town attracting many people to meditate in its monasteries.

The hill contains hundreds of stupas. You can walk up Sagaing Hill and there are great views of the town, the Irrawaddy and Ava (Inwa) Bridge. Covered paths along the hillside connect the monasteries and monuments to each other.

The Soon Oo Ponya Shin Pagoda is located on the top of the Sagaing Hill. It is one of the oldest temples on Sagaing Hill.  It was built in 1312 by Minister Pon Nya. and it is decorated with glass tiles for an unusual shimmering effect. It has some interesting paintings and statues, and fantastic views over the Buddhist University, other temples and pagoda below.

Innwa is an ancient imperial capital of successive Burmese kingdoms from the 14th to 19th centuries. Throughout history, it was sacked and rebuilt numerous times. The capital city was finally abandoned after it was completely destroyed by a series of major earthquakes in March 1839. Though only a few traces of its former grandeur remain today. 
Innwa is on an island and the only access is longboat. Once you arrive on the island, you need to procure a horse and cart to take you around to see things as they are spread fairly far apart.

I had our first trip incident climbing on the boat....I tripped on a protruding bolt and rolled my right ankle badly. With in a hour it was the size of a golf ball and eventually I could barely weight bear on it. I still managed to see the rest of the days sights but was very crippled. Thankfully, the next morning it felt better and I was able to walk enough to function. It's still super swollen but I'm getting around ok...way too much walking and climbing needed in the next few days to be injured and there is literally no medical care here. 

The biggest draw in the area of amarapura is the unique U Bein Bridge, a beautiful 1.2 kilometre structure built from teak planks and said to be the longest of its type in the world. The local mayor, U Bein, salvaged the wood from pieces of the dismantled teak palace at Amarapura when the capital moved to Mandalay in 1857. 

In wet season the water laps the boards but in dry season it's a good 20 feet up and there are crops in the field below. It was super sketchy to walk on though...held together by random nails on uneven rotting boards...and it kinda moved in spots with the weight of people walking it!

The bridge’s attraction is not simply in its structure, but that it remains a central part of the community, with hundreds of locals and saffron-robed monks walking their bicycles home along it, and fishermen going about their daily work in its shadow. The best time to see the bridge is sunset...it was stunning and one of the best sunsets I've seen.  You can hire a boat to take you out to watch it from the water, but we just climbed down and watched it from the side of the river.