Taung Kalat
Interesting facts
- The name Taung Kalat means pedestal hill, and its gilded summit stands about 657 metres above sea level.
- Mount Popa, the parent volcano locals call Taung Ma-gyi or mother hill, last erupted around 6050 BCE and has a caldera some 1.6 km wide breached to the north-west.
- In clear weather the Popa massif can be seen from the Irrawaddy River as far as 60 km away.
- Because it is the chief centre of nat worship, Mount Popa has been called the Mount Olympus of Burma.
- Burmese custom says visitors should not wear red, black or green or bring meat, especially pork, for fear of offending the resident spirits.
- Before King Anawrahta's time, hundreds of animals were reportedly sacrificed to the nats here during festivals.
- According to legend, the flower-eating ogress Me Wunna loved Byatta, the king's flower gatherer; he was executed for it, she died of grief, and both became nats.
- With more than 200 springs and streams, the Popa area forms an oasis in the arid, scrubby central zone of Myanmar.
- The forests of Mount Popa hold the largest population of the Popa langur, a critically endangered monkey described as a new species in 2020.
- A lizard, Lygosoma popae, is found nowhere else and is named after the mountain.
Why it is worth it
Rising abruptly from the dry plains of central Myanmar, Taung Kalat is a sheer-sided volcanic plug — the hardened throat of an old vent from the Mount Popa volcano — standing about 225 metres above its surroundings, with a gilded Buddhist monastery balanced on its crown. From a distance the whole thing looks improbable: a single column of rock with a cap of golden stupas and white pavilions, framed by the larger, forested bulk of Mount Popa behind it, a dormant stratovolcano that climbs to 1,518 metres.
The plug is climbed by a covered stairway of 777 steps that winds up its flank, once looked after by the renowned hermit U Khandi, who restored many sacred stairways in Burma. The ascent passes shrines, prayer halls and the macaques that live on the mountain, and ends at a summit terrace with a view over the palm-studded plain towards Bagan. The name Popa is usually traced to a Pali and Sanskrit word for flower.
Beyond its Buddhist monastery, Taung Kalat is above all the spiritual home of the nats, the spirits of Burmese folk religion. The Mount Popa area is regarded as the seat of the official pantheon of thirty-seven nats, and among them the Mahagiri nats, together with Byatta and Me Wunna, are held to dwell here permanently. The great gatherings come on the full moons of Nayon (May–June) and Nadaw (November–December), when mediums, musicians and pilgrims crowd the stairway. It is one of the clearest places to see how Buddhism and the older spirit cults sit side by side in Myanmar.
Getting there
Taung Kalat stands at the foot of Mount Popa in Mandalay Region, about 12 km from the town of Kyaukpadaung and around 50 km south-east of Bagan, from where most visitors come by road. Nyaung U Airport (NYU), the air gateway to Bagan, is the closest practical airport; Mandalay International Airport (MDL) lies about 118 km away in a straight line.
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From the encyclopaedia
Taung Kalat is a Buddhist monastery and temple complex located on Mount Popa in Mandalay Region, Myanmar. The site is built on a tall volcanic plug, and is one of several prominent nat spiritual sites in the vicinity of Mount Popa.
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