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Monywa is a trading city on the eastern bank of the Chindwin River in Sagaing Region, 136 kilometres north-west of Mandalay, and the seat of the region's government offices. It is famous for the giant Buddhas of Maha Bodhi Tahtaung, the many-spired Thanboddhay Pagoda and the cave temples of Phowintaung across the river.
The city lies in the Dry Valley, the only part of Southeast Asia with a hot semi-arid climate, and is known as Neem City for the neem trees along its streets. It trades beans, pulses and palm sugar from the Chindwin valley, and its rough cotton blankets have supplied most of Myanmar for a century. It is also called the centre of poetry in Upper Myanmar.
Most visits combine the pagodas around town with a crossing of the Chindwin to Phowintaung's 947 carved caves. Further out are the volcanic crater lakes of the Lower Chindwin, while boats run upriver on the Chindwin, which stays navigable for hundreds of kilometres in the monsoon.
This standing Buddha rises 116 metres at Khatakan Taung near Monywa and was completed in 2008, briefly the tallest statue in the world. Its 31 floors stand for the 31 planes of existence in Buddhist teaching, and each floor carries mural paintings of its realm.
Built in 1991 beside the giant standing Buddha, this reclining figure is 101.5 metres long and 18.3 metres wide. The statue is hollow, and the rooms inside it display the Great Chronicles of the Buddha, so the figure works as a shrine and a picture gallery at the same time.
Built in 1979 and modelled on the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, this golden stupa is 69 metres tall, about two thirds the size of the original. Visitors can climb the stairs on the outside or follow a hollow walkway inside the stupa that leads up into the dome itself.
Founded in 1960 by the monk Narada, Maha Bodhi Tahtaung means a thousand great Bo trees. The grounds grew from 15 to 250 acres with more than 9,000 Bo trees, under which stand thousands of Buddha statues in long rows, recalling the tree of the Buddha's enlightenment.
On the west bank of the Chindwin, about 25 kilometres west of Monywa, this hill holds 947 small and large caves cut into sandstone and filled with carved Buddha images from the 14th to 18th centuries. Its name means the mountain of isolated, solitary meditation.
The walls and ceilings of the Phowintaung caves are covered with mural paintings of geometric patterns and Jataka stories of the Buddha's past lives, dated with the carved images to between the 14th and 18th centuries. Rows of seated Buddhas and figures of courtiers fill many of the painted shrines.
About 30 km north-west of Monywa lies a field of seven or eight dormant explosion craters, and Twin Taung is the crater lake east of the Chindwin. Spirulina, a blue-green alga, grows in its water and is harvested and sold, and in 2014 the government planned to nominate the lake for World Heritage.
Set between the Chindwin and Myittha rivers, this park was a teak reserve from 1893 and became a national park in 1989, now an ASEAN Heritage Park. Named after a legendary monk, its forests shelter Asian elephants, gaur, bears, leopards and the rare black giant squirrel.
Built between 1939 and 1952 by the monk Thambuddhei Sayadaw, who was inspired by Borobudur in Indonesia, this temple holds over 580,000 Buddha images in its niches and halls. It stands on the site of a 14th-century monastery, and its grounds sheltered thousands of refugees during World War II.
The Shwezigon and the Sutaungpyi are the best-known pagodas inside Monywa, linked by Payagyi Road. For the Sutaungpyi festival, the largest in town, held from the fifth to the eighth day after the Thadingyut full moon, the road between the two pagodas fills with stalls, shows and shoppers.
Kyaukka village, about 16 kilometres east of Monywa, is known for its Shwe Gu Ni Pagoda, which local history says rises where an Ashoka stupa once stood. Rebuilt under King Thalun and finished in 1638, it is ringed by 43 small stupas, and the village is also known for its everyday lacquerware.
Monywa faces the Chindwin, the largest tributary of the Irrawaddy, which rises in the Hukawng Valley of Kachin State. River transport has always mattered here, as boats can travel about 640 kilometres upstream to Hkamti in the monsoon, and ferries cross to Phowintaung.
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Log in to add photosPhoto: McKay Savage from London, UK, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
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Photo: McKay Savage from London, UK, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
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