(Magway) Worshipers return to a central Myanmar temple, built around golden Buddha footprints, for an annual pilgrimage that had been curbed in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic and coup military.
The Shwe Sat Taw Pagoda, located in the Magway region west of the capital Naypyidaw, was built around the footprints which, according to myth, the Buddha left during a visit more than 100 years ago. a thousand years.
The festival, which lasts three months, usually takes place between February and April, in this predominantly Buddhist country.
On Wednesday, temple administrators raised the heavy glass dome that protects the footprints from moisture. A queue has formed to spread gold leaf into the hollows of the larger-than-life footprints, adding to the sparkle left behind by generations of pilgrims.
At another nearby riverside shrine, families offered flowers and banknotes as children played in the water.
But the few thousand pilgrims who made the trip are still far fewer than the crowds that once thronged the shore.
Entire areas of Magway have been ravaged by fighting since the February 2021 coup. The army has been accused of burning down villages and carrying out extrajudicial executions.
“I come to this festival every year to give flowers,” said Than Than, who has traveled hundreds of miles from Mandalay further north.
Vendor Yee Mar, from Monywa in neighboring Sagaing, who has set up her stall near the pagoda, hopes more pilgrims will come. “The Shwe Sat Taw festival was very popular and attended in the past,” she recalls.
Many other stalls remained empty, but Win Htay, the temple administrator, hopes pilgrims can enjoy the relative calm.
“I’m glad to see that many people came to the opening ceremony today when they couldn’t come for the past few years,” he said.