The afternoon of our day tour of Mandalay included a few more pagodas and statues.

Kuthodaw Pagoda & World’s Largest Book – At the center of this religious complex we found a beautiful 57 meter-tall, gilded pagoda built by King Mindon during the second half of the 19th century. Several impressive gold shrines and prayer areas stood next to the pagoda.

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Our guide had told us ahead of time that Kuthodaw housed the world’s largest book. And we quickly discovered what he meant as we walked by just a fraction of the 729 white marble shrines.  Each structure contains a marble tablet with text of the Tripitaka, Buddhism’s most sacred work. Each stone slab is 1.5 meters tall, 1.1 meters wide, and about 14 centimeters thick. The complete text was originally inscribed with gold lettering. But when the British army conquered Mandalay in 1886, the British soldiers used the pagoda complex as a military base and removed much of the gold and jewels from the religious site. When Kuthodaw was restored years later the pagoda was covered in gold and black ink was used for the Tripitaka tablets.

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Skinny Buddha – We had become quite used to seeing adequately-fed (and more) Buddha images throughout Asia. So this statue was quite unique for us. Built in 2011, the 75 foot-tall, seated, meditative Buddha looked rather underweight with his ribs showing. He represents Buddha at the beginning of his journey for enlightenment, which did not include much eating and drinking

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After studying the Skinny Buddha we looked at the statues behind him. Some of the images were hard to ignore.

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Sanda Muni Paya – This peaceful pagoda complex was built as a memorial to the assassinated Crown Prince Kanaung in the 19th century. We did not take any pictures of the very large Buddha statue in the center because it is undergoing extensive renovation.  However, we did take an excessive number of photos of the 770 intricate, white towers arranged in a square around the pagoda. 

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