Below Shwemawdaw Pagoda lies the former pinnacle of the pagoda, known in Myanmar as Ngapyawbu, on a rock that was also part of the previous monument. Shwemawdaw Pagoda has been destroyed five times in recorded history, each time the result of natural disasters. This Ngapyawbu dates back to 1917 when an earthquake struck the area around Bago and destroyed the pagoda.

THEY came in their thousands, crowding along the narrow road leading to the ancient Shwemawdaw pagoda. Now that the long-awaited festival was almost upon them, the air of excitement among the villagers was intense. Family groups had packed into a long stream of slow-moving cow carts trundling along towards the festivities. Some had started out the previous day for the one-night, half-day ride from their village. Some slept, some chatted quietly, others teased and joked and shouted at each other. All of them carried with them whatthey needed to enjoy the 10-day festival. Families brought from their villages everything from pins and needles to kitchen utensils and even beds, to make themselves a home from home during festival time.

Even the cows pulling the carts looked lively amid the villagers’ cheerful fuss, if a little tired.

“We can’t miss the chance of participating in this festival. It’s the biggest pagoda festival in this region and we go every year,” a young villager on a cart said.

A middle-aged woman nearby said she had prepared her domestic produce to sell in the festival, saying this was the only chance for people like her from small villages to make a big profit.

Situated in Bago Township, 50miles (80kilometres), from Yangon, the Shwemawdaw pagoda can be reached in one and half hour by car.

The Shwemawdaw pagoda festival takes place every year in April, which is the first month, Tagu, of the Myanmar calendar. It is the last break before the farmers and peasants go to work in their fields during the rainy season. In 2008, the pagoda’s 2590th festival began on April 15 and ended on April 24.

A member of the Shwemawdaw Pagoda Trustee Board, U Tun Nyunt, said the pagoda festival was the most heavily attended in lower Myanmar, with its long historical background.

“The festival is not only for the people in Bago, but attracts people from nearby towns and villages as well,” U Tun Nyunt said.

They travel, in more than 1000 cow carts every day, from the several small villages that surround the pagoda. Some stay over-night and some from the nearer villages go home to sleep, U Tun Nyunt said.

He said nearly 100,000 people took part in the pagoda festival and there were 300 registered shops. At night people slept where they could, some in tents and some in their carts, around the foot of the pagoda.

A hive of activity can be seen in festival days – shops selling things like clothes, household items, foods, village products, and a variety of entertainments such as Zat Pwe (traditional dance).

According to the pagoda’s ancient tradition, more than two thousand five hundred years ago, two brothers named Mahasala and Cullasala met the Buddha somewhere in India and were personally given two sacred hairs by the Buddha himself. They came back to Bago and enshrined the two sacred hairs on the Sudasana Hill and built a pagoda, where the present pagoda stands. The original pagoda was only 75 feet (22 metres) high and was whitewashed.

Bago having been a royal capital and then a battleground between Myanmar and Mon in olden days, the Shwemawdaw Pagoda was alternately occupied by successive victorious kings, who maintained and repaired it. The various Myanmar and Mon kings raised the pagoda over the years to its present height of 373 feet (113metres) and gilded it again and again. Throughout history the pagoda continued to be an important place of religious veneration, drawing large crowds and the most powerful of kings.

The pagoda has withstood several natural disasters in its long history. Five powerful earthquakes and a violent storm have been recorded in the region – earthquakes in AD865, 1757, 1912, 1917 and 1930, and the storm in 1492 – some of which badly damaged the pagoda.

The upper part of the pagoda collapsed each time during the three major quakes of 1912, 1917 and 1930. The old broken Ngapyawbu of the pagoda (Banana Bud in English), damaged on July 5 1917, can still be seen at the foot of the pagoda on its eastern approach. Reconstruction with an earthquake-proof structure from the bell-shaped dome to the finial ‘umbrella’ top was completed only in 1945. A number of ancient images of the Buddha found in the damaged top part of the pagoda after the earthquakes can be seen in the pagoda museum.