Pindaya

On our way to Pindaya we stopped at a small market.

       

Then farther on we passed through areas of open fields and farms with various crops.

Then we spotted an ox cart and a woman and her son tending the cauliflower crop.

   

Next we saw young boys tending to their families’ water buffaloes. We were able to get them to perform some acrobatic stunts for us to photograph and enjoy.

       

It was about 4:30 in the afternoon so we knew it was quitting time for the farmers. Hence, we looked on dirt roads and obscure locations and got lucky to find these farmers after a hard day of work.

     

On our first morning in Pindaya, we first went to the path toward the sacred caves of Pindaya with the great Banyan trees. These trees were planted to provide shelter to pilgrims visiting the caves. Can you see the golden stupas through the trees?

 

Here are some more Banyon tree photos. Note how a concrete support has been erected to hold the huge branches of the Banyon tree.

This little girl and her brother were climbing the Banyon tree and having a blast. Their mom did not seem as worried as I would be!
 

These horse drawn carriages are used as taxis.

On the walk back toward the hotel, there were several people washing clothes in the lake. Though the area seemed to have some nice homes, most homes do not have running water, only some water collected from the rain and stored in tanks. So, people go to the lake to bathe and to wash clothes.

A view of the lake with stupas in the background.

Pindaya Cave (where the Shan prince prepares to dispatch the spider with a magic arrow) houses 8,999 statues/representations, of the Buddha. A fascinating place!

   

On a drive in the country we saw a man plowing a whole field the old fashioned way.

We shopped for cookies that Daniel and Don (our guides) knew that a toothless old woman in the village of Danu really enjoyed last year. We went to the village and to the home of this old woman and found out that she had died five months ago at the age of 105. Don gave her family a photo of the woman and family taken last year. Daniel distributed the cookies to the children.

 

After taking a photo of a couple of the children, they all wanted to pose for photos and see them on the LCD of my camera. Go to the Faces of Burma post to see those photos.

Across the street I watched a woman harvesting her crop. She had her basket set just right to toss them into it.

On our way out of Pindaya, we drove through the rolling hills Somerset and came upon oxcarts lined up to transfer cauliflower to 35′ tractor trailers.

   

We also found groups of men and (mostly) women thrashing dried sesame plants and rice by making a pile over a tarp and beating the plants with sticks. This is unirragated “mountain rice,” which yields one crop per year.