Shwedagon Pagoda

When we were compiling our List of Missing Sites in 2014, two sites from Myanmar made it into the Top 20: Bagan and the Shwedagon Pagoda. The history of Bagan is known and it will be submitted again without a doubt in the coming years, but why wasn’t the Shwedagon Pagoda even on Myanmar’s Tentative List until December 2018? Could it be because it is an active religious site and they want to keep it sacred? Or is it too strongly connected with political activities such as the August 1988 call for democracy by Aung San Suu Kyi addressing 500,000 people there, or the uprise from monks in September 2007?

I scheduled a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda on my very first afternoon in Myanmar. I had arrived a bit later from Bangkok than anticipated, so I headed out there only at 4.30 p.m.. The site supposedly is on its best at dusk anyway. I entered via the western gate, after paying the 8000 kyat entrance fee for foreigners (about 5,60 EUR). This gate comes with escalator stairs, not a very usual sight in a temple complex but quite handy as the pagoda lies on a hill. You have to leave your shoes behind already downstairs so this became my first barefoot escalator experience.

I had seen Shwedagon’s enormous gilded pagoda already from the air. There aren’t many highrise buildings in Yangon, so this still is the city’s major landmark. Up and close it’s mainly the glittering golden …