A granite boulder about 25 feet high, covered in gold leaf, sitting on the edge of a slope at 1,100 metres with a 7.3 metre pagoda on top of it and almost nothing underneath it. The contact patch is tiny and the whole thing looks like it is about to go, which is exactly the point. What holds it, by tradition, is a single strand of the Buddha’s hair: a hermit was given it, and passed it to a king who had the power to set the rock in place around it. Male pilgrims cross a bridge over the drop to press squares of gold leaf onto the stone, which is how the gold gets there and keeps getting thicker; women are not permitted to cross the bridge or touch the rock, and the signs at the site say so. You go barefoot for the last 1.2 km up from Yatetaung, about an hour. Peak season November to March. Mon State, 210 km from Yangon.
Mon State, Myanmar
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