Mount Popa

PeaksMandalay Region,Myanmar

An extinct Burmese volcano whose spring-fed slopes stay green in the dry zone, with a monastery covering a sheer volcanic plug beside it.

September·Quiet month

Jun–Oct

Monsoon rain feeds Popa's 200 springs and greens the slopes, but it slicks the stone stairway and low cloud hides the plain most mornings — heaviest June to August, easing by October. Nothing closes: the monks still climb the quiet, empty steps.

Year-round The gilded monastery, the barefoot 777-step stairway, the shrine to all 37 nats and the macaques working the handrails are here every day of the year.

Mount Popa is an extinct volcano of 1,518 metres rising out of the dry zone of central Myanmar, in the Mandalay region an hour from Bagan, whose spring-fed slopes stay green in a plain of scrub, and beside it stands Taung Kalat, a sheer volcanic plug with a monastery covering its summit, climbed barefoot on 777 covered steps past the macaques and the shrine of the 37 nats, the spirits of the Burmese pantheon whose home this is. The plug is the famous picture, a tower of rock 737 metres high with gold stupas on top, and the roofed stairway winds up its face from the village, with monkeys on the rails and the vendors selling flowers; at its foot a mirror-tiled hall holds the 37 nats in rows, their faces gilded, dressed in silk and hung with the banknotes that petitioners pin to them, since Popa is the home of the nats, the spirits worshipped alongside Buddhism, and the mother spirit of the mountain, Popa Medaw, was a flower-eating ogress who fell in love with the man sent up the mountain to gather blossoms for the king of Bagan. Climbing barefoot is a rule rather than a courtesy, won in a fight over shoes at pagodas that helped start the independence movement. The summit terrace looks over the plain to Bagan and its temples and back to the green cone of Popa itself, which almost no one climbs, a walk of a day through the forest of the national park with the plug seen from above, small under its gold. On cold, clear dawns in the dry season fog settles across the low ground and swallows everything but the plug, which stands out of the white like an island with a gold crown until the sun burns it off. The mountain is the source of the region's water, with springs feeding the villages, and the road from Bagan passes the palm-sugar stalls. Mount Popa is a volcano that keeps the spirits of a country, and the rock beside it wears their monastery.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Start at first light — the stone is still cool underfoot, the stairway is at its emptiest, and any dawn fog below the rock burns off within an hour or two of sunrise.
Shoes and socks both come off at the bottom — in Myanmar socks count as footwear, and the whole 777-step stairway is sacred ground, so you climb the full flight on bare soles.
You cannot see the famous view while standing on it — the silhouette everyone knows is the one from the road and the hillsides above the village, not the one from the summit you climbed.

Things to do

1
Climb 777 covered steps past resident macaques
A roofed stairway of 777 steps winds up the rock face from the village to the monastery on the summit. You climb it barefoot, shoes and socks left at the bottom, because the whole flight counts as sacred ground. Troops of macaques work the handrails and ledges and will help themselves to an open bag or a water bottle, so carry nothing loose in your hands. The hermit U Khandi, who died in 1949, spent his later years keeping these steps in repair.
2
Meet all 37 nats at the shrine below the rock
In a mirror-tiled hall at the foot of the stairway, the spirits of the official pantheon stand in rows, faces gilded, dressed in silk and hung with banknotes that petitioners pin to them. Among them is Popa Medaw, the ogress mother of this mountain, and the Shwe Byin brothers, her two executed sons.
3
Catch the rock standing above a sea of fog
On cold, clear dawns in the dry season, fog settles across the low ground and swallows everything but the plug, which stands out of the white like an island with a gold crown. The stupas on the summit catch the first sun while the whole plain beneath them stays buried. From the terraces on the hillside above the village you get the same profile at the other end of the day, when the white halls turn copper and the rock beneath them goes to shadow.
4
Hike the volcano itself and look down on the plug
Almost no one climbs Mount Popa proper, the 1,518-metre cone standing behind the famous rock. The path leaves the village and works up through the green, spring-fed forest that makes this mountain an oasis, and from the higher slopes you look down on Taung Kalat, small and gold against the dry country beyond.

Watch

Nearby

45 km