Thousands of devotees in predawn darkness in western Myanmar on Thursday scrambled to the top of a mountain said to be home to a spirit guarding 500 mythical ducks to mark the Tazaungdaing festival of light.
The full moon that marks the end of the rainy season is celebrated across Buddhist-majority Myanmar in explosions of color, with fireworks, lanterns and hot air balloons.
Celebrations have been muted this year, with much of the country in uprising against a February coup and escalating violence between junta troops and dissidents.
Photo: AFP
Western Rakhine state has remained largely calm, as a ceasefire between local insurgents and the military holds, allowing thousands of intrepid souls to climb “500-duck mountain” for the first time in years.
Devotees started under the stars, lighting their way with their phones, gripping the trunks or roots of trees as they scrambled up the hillside, with friends pulling each other up at difficult stretches.
“Although it is tiring, I am happy because there are a lot of people here,” Tun Shwe Tha, who started his ascent at midnight, said.
Photo: AFP
“And it helps me eat well,” he added, laughing.
The 66-year-old said it took him more than three hours to reach the top of the mountain — guarded, locals claim, by a female “nat” or local spirit, which watches over the area’s ducks.
The spirits have rules for those who visit their realm — climbers should not eat duck the day before or after they visit the mountain, and are forbidden from swearing while making the arduous ascent.
“I was told at home that this mountain is very sensitive in terms of spirituality, because the guardian nat is very sensitive,” Wai Yan Aung said. “I was told to be very careful of speaking and to not insult.”
It was the first time in three years that devotees were allowed to climb.
In previous years, the state was wracked by fighting between the military and Arakan Army insurgents fighting for autonomy for the ethnic Rakhine.
Ahead of the ascent, thousands gather near the foot of the mountain to watch traditional theater, stroll around and buy fruit — in contrast to much of the country’s almost-daily reports of bomb blasts and bloody clashes.
Days after the coup, the junta reaffirmed a commitment to a ceasefire that has freed up military troops to battle the local “self-defense forces” that have sprung up elsewhere.
Last week, junta troops clashed with Arakan Army fighters, sparking fears of a return to clashes that in 2019 displaced more than 200,000 people across the state, one of Myanmar’s poorest.
Climbers do not want a return to the violence.
“We want to be peaceful without the sound of gunshots,” one visitor said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS