The country where Buddhism is a show

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There are things in Myanmar that, if the traveler enters the unsuspecting country, leaves one a patity to the first. For example, the overwhelming number of stray dogs that sleep in the gutters, or that cross the road happily, forcing the driver to honk the horn or slow down so as not to chill the dog - and that it shows that respect for the lives of Bugs is pulling scrupulously. Or the custom that many men have of chewing betel, a kind of herb that puts red teeth - and eats them like a careless decay - and that causes a thick salivation that is usually seen scattered on the ground, very similar to some spots of blood. But as one enters the country, what is most surprising about ancient Burma is its landscape, virgin and majestic, and its culture.

Without counting Nepal and Bhutan, Myanmar is one of the countries in the world in which Buddhism exists in a more widespread way - and practiced - as an official religion. The landscape is magnificent of pagodas that rise on any promontory , and temples that hide in any place of complicated access, whether climbing stairs or going down to caves.

Myanmar is a land marked by hundreds of thousands of Buddhas, representations in effigy, gold or stone, that hide everywhere. And people come to pray in front of the statues, deposit a donation - all the boxes arranged to collect eggs or offerings are full of small bills - and keep the large-scale religion alive. But it is, without a doubt, a type of Buddhism very different from the one that survives in Thailand or Cambodia: there, the practice is more domestic, in small altars at street level. In Myanmar, on the other hand, there is no temple without Buddha - sometimes four, sometimes thousands, like in the Pindaya cave, where there are 8,000 smaller effigies - and therefore Buddhism lives.

97% of the population in Myanmar - which amounts to more than 55 million people , according to the last census - is Buddhist, and Buddhism is felt in every corner, even floating in the air. All people must be a monk at some point in their life, it is part of the process of education of young people, and it also extends to women, who are distinguished by wearing a shaved head and a pink robe.

People take prayer very seriously, a prayer implies reciting with a rosary the text the 'Heart Sutra'

As if that were not enough, some temples have a public address system that broadcasts a live reading of the comments to the teachings of the Buddha and the classical texts - a mantra that first gets drunk, and that something desperate can be done when you wear 12 hours followed by sonsonete-, but that is always magical when the sun begins to fall and is heard in the distance in places like Bagan, one of the most generous and best preserved enclaves of religious architecture in the country, or inside the Shewdagon Yangon Pagoda, a majestic and baroque temple that would be equivalent to the Vatican of Buddhism , a splendid place, imposing in height - the Burmese government is forbidden that any building in the city is taller than the spire of the pagoda, which limits the possibility of erecting skyscrapers like those seen in Bangkok - and that induces a state of contagious peace when people gather to pray.

There are different ways to claim the attention of a superior force in the East. In Myanmar, the Buddhist population takes prayers seriously, and a prayer implies reciting, with a rosary of beads in hand, the Heart Sutra , the most widespread and read Buddhist text by millions of people in Asia, which would amount to the Creed or a long string of our fathers and Hail Marys in the Catholic faith.

Prayer - which is individual, but that gathers crowds - is one of the great cultural shows of the country: it moves and admires to see dozens of people simultaneously united in the desire to draw the attention of a superior force in environments as great as the pagoda Mandalay Mahamuni, where a solid gold Buddha is preserved , or the Yangon Botataung pagoda, where tradition says that one of the two original Buddha hairs in the country is preserved - the other is the one that holds the famous golden rock that is on the outskirts of the same city.

Myanmar was opened to tourism just a decade ago and remains a little explored country. If one wants a vacation in Southeast Asia with beach, adventure, comfort and culture, Thailand or Vietnam are still more complete, advanced and hedonistic areas. Myanmar demands an extra effort: the Buddhism that is practiced is so conservative that, as it happens in many temples of India, the visitor and the local are required to step on the sacred ground with the sole of the foot, without wearing shoes or slippers nor flip-flops -or socks-, rural areas are reached by narrow and dented roads, and cities are almost impracticable for pedestrians, either because there are no sidewalks, or because they are narrow and of irregular heights, that is, with undercuts.

The Buddhism that is practiced is so conservative that the visitor and the local are required to step on the sacred ground with the sole of the foot, without wearing shoes

But everything that demands effort, then offers a reward. Myanmar is not a country for surfing, such as Indonesia, nor suitable for scuba diving, such as Malaysia or Thailand, but it can be a paradise for trekkers, for adventure tourism - depending on what areas there are still active guerrillas , and You may be assaulted by pirates to steal what you carry in the car- or, for those who do not dare so much, an experience consisting of admiring imposing natural spaces, such as Lake Inle, and above all, take a binge of temples and spirituality in live meat as it does not exist anywhere else in Asia.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project