About 50kms from Bagan is Mount Popa.  At the top of a flight of 777 stairs (no I didn’t count them) is a monastery at the summit of Taung Kalatt.  This is a popular pilgrimage site as its considered the home of the most powerful Nats (spirits) and also has religious relics.

You need to give yourself at least 1-2 hours to climb up as it can get very crowded in parts.  As it’s a religious site, you need to leave your shoes at the bottom.  There are people selling peanuts and other legume type snacks so the stairs are covered with peanut shells and dried beans.  Not to mention Macaque monkeys running around.   I had one baby one use my shoulder to bounce off to his next location.

Although there were people cleaning the stairs and they were asking for “donations for cleaning”,  never fear as your feet will be disgustingly filthy by the time you get back to your shoes.  Don’t lick your feet.

We got here reasonably early, but even so, when leaving Mount Popa to return to our bus it proved very difficult to find.  It was quite staggering how they managed to get these massive tour buses turned around in such a small area and kept the traffic moving.

We had to park some distance from entrance so it gave us an opportunity to take some “me in front of” photos.

 

Not quite Starbucks…

And we finally get to the start of the 777 steps.

 

The stairways are covered so it can also be visited in the rainy season.

 

 

How many stairs to go?

 

And finally we get to the top where the good stuff is…

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to check out my previous posts about Myanmar and please do follow my blog as there is a lot more still to come. 🙂