Walk in the hills, and ThuThuzar Win's village

Sunday, December 14

monasteries and pagodas in Sagaing Hills

[note: this got uploaded by accident ahead of the Wild Swans entry, so it happened after that one]
       
I went for a couple hour walk in the hills this morning, this time exploring some of the side paths and stairways leading down into monasteries in the valley, past little stupas and pagodas, and connecting to other trails and stairways. I must have walked through, or looked down into, more than a dozen monastery courtyards and little pagodas in the space of my walk, each separated by barely a stone’s throw. 



 The first long stone stairway I walked most of the way down led to the monastery grounds directly below the 30 Buddhas Pagoda we’d visited last week. I walked as far as where the stairway merged with the parallel downward curving driveway, and climbed up a little pagoda perched there, from where I could look down into the courtyard and all the different buildings and shrine areas. 
 

another stairway, monastery below in background

The next stairway I took all the way down and through a monastery courtyard to the continuation of the path which led to another monastery, which I wasn’t going to enter, but then saw some steps go up along the side of a shrine building just inside the entrance to my left, so I climbed those. They led to a broad path that I followed a bit on downward to my right, overlooking more monasteries, and on the hills in front of me I located the larger pagodas I’d visited earlier. 

monastery on hill in distance

 I then turned around and walked up the other direction, detouring up a rise on my right to a deserted courtyard with a vast view and a lion- or dragon-guarded pool, and then back to the path and through another monastery courtyard past some barking dogs; an old woman was sitting to the right and shushed them; behind her were two real cave openings (not covered with cement like many caves).

                                                  A friendly man with a little boy a little further on confirmed my gesturing question about the direction of the road, and I climbed on past an older wooden structure housing a Buddha, and past

another golden pagoda on my left, arriving at the ridge road that I recognized from my first walk up there on my own (the time I had just gone straight).

 It was just by the last two pagodas on the road, one on the left and one on the right, before the road went a little further through the trees to the flower-trellised house or monastery that I hadn’t gone beyond.

water jug along path just below pagoda overlooking river

From the pagoda on the far side of the road there’s a beautiful view of the river which is close by at that point, and the bordering green wetland area.  It’s a totally different view, from which I can’t see IBEC or any of the other familiar landmarks.

shrine by pagoda overlooking river

Afternoon

I was supposed to meet Thuzar Win at 10:30 at the office to go to her village, but, not atypically, she wasn’t there then.  Finally, at about 1:00, we left; from Sagaing we crossed over the bridge in the direction of Mandalay, with beautiful wetlands to the side, to her village. We stopped where a neighbor friend of hers in the middle of the red-dirt roadway was making dosa-like crepes, both savory and sweet, of which we had a couple.
 

Then we went on to her house, where I met her 80-year-old grandfather and nearly deaf grandmother in her 70s.   it was very sweet watching him help her with her sweater. palm, mango—in their little yard.

Her mother’s house was next door, and she served us tea leaf salad and tangerines. 

Thuzar Win's friend

Next we visited Thuzar’s friend, who lived next to a yard of cows, and then stopped by her ninth grade teacher’s house—who also served us tea leaf salad. Thuzar showed me the monastery school nearby, before going back to her mother's house, where her friend met us with a gift of some dumpling-like buns that were actually some kind of milk curd. Finally, on the way home we stopped by a tea stall where she bought some delicious little chicken boiled dumplings. 

Thuzar Win with her grandmother and grandfather at their house in her village