u bein bridge

Our travels on the watery ‘Road to Mandalay’ arrived today at Mandalay city.
Founded in 1857 by King Mindon, it was built as a fulfilment of an ancient Buddhist prophecy in which Gautama Buddha had once visited Mandalay Hill proclaiming that on the 2400 anniversary of his death, a centre of Buddhist teaching would be built at the foot of the hill.
Prophecies and astrology have played and continue to play a large part in establishing and abandoning cities and towns and in much the same way, the previous royal capital of the Upper Burma region, Amarapura (City of Immortality) was founded in 1783.
Amarapura was capital for only 70 years until the king moved his capital...along with 150,000 people and most of the palace... 20 miles to the new centre of Mandalay to fulfil the prophecy.

Amarapura is a centre of fine cloth weaving for ceremonial longyis in cottons and silks with threads of gold and silver. The old town was settled on the banks of Lake Taungthaman, spanned by the ‘longest teak bridge in the world’ and quite probably the only teak bridge in the world, the U Bein bridge.
Built from teak planks, posts and pillars retrieved from Inwa, the royal capital previous to Amarapura (it all gets very complicated this packing up the palace and people and moving on!!), the bridge is packed with monks, travellers, villagers and increasingly more tourists.

I walked the bridge, paying to release a small owl (this will apparently bring merit but it was more to do with releasing the poor wee soul) and as the sun set, we sat on small sampans (Kipling’s ‘flying fishes’) with eye painted bows.
Ever surprising, our guide Robin had arranged for two of the lads from the boat to have glasses filled with white wine and grenadine, mirroring the sunset.
Lucky us.