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Inle Lake is found in the Shan State in a valley surrounded by lush green mountains. The lake is freshwater and is home to around 70,000 people who mostly survive through fishing and farming. The quaint village of Indein on the western side of the lake is accessed by a winding river that is too shallow to use late in the dry season.

Nyaung Oak (Under the shade of Banyan trees) Monastery has a nice, old moldering complex of shrines and stupa at the bottom of the hill. At the top is Shwe Indein reached by a long stairway with over 400 wooden columns. From the hillside there are great views across the lake to the hill in the east.

Covered stairway to Shwe Inn Thein Paya

Indein is one of the small villages of Inle Lake located on the western bank of the lake. A Buddha image has enshrined at a whitewashed stupa, which is on the summit of a hill.

Below the stupa around the hill are cluster of hundreds of ancient stupas most are ruins overgrown with bushes. The pagoda hill is quiet and calm.

One could feel the pleasant cool breeze with the sweet rings of the bells hanging at the umbrella of the stupa.

Mesmerizing view from pagoda hill

release the fatigue and

refresh everybody who ascend to the

peak.

The former princedom of Shan today constitute the largest state in Myanmar, situated in the northeast of the country. A fascinating feature of this area is the number of different ethnic peoples that live in the state. The ethnic majority here is the population of four million Shan, though they actually call themselves Tai or Dai, the word 'Shan' having been derived by the British from Siam.

A Pa O woman

Like many other ethnic peoples, the Shan were driven out of their home in South and central China by the Tartars, and they migrated to South-East Asia. They settled in Myanmar, but later Myanmar kings and the Kachin drove them out of the north to the northern mountains.

Their close relatives, the Thais, often refer to the Shan as Tai Yai ('big Thai'), and the Shan call their land Muang Tai rather than Shan State. The Shan also settled in the north of Thailand, the Hanoi region of Vietnam, India's Assam and the Chinese province of Yunnan

The second largest population is that of the Wa, who belong to the Mon-Khmer people and speak various dialects of the Wa language. An estimated one million Wa live on the Myanmar border with China and in China itself. Once they were greatly feared, although they lived in the remote mountains. The British adventurer Sir J. George Scott undertook the first perilous expedition to the Wa region in 1893, and until well into the 1970s the Wa were known to stick human heads on poles in order to improve their harvests.

Text: Internet

Pictures: Sanda Foişoreanu & Internet

Copyright: All the images belong to their authors

Presentation: Sanda Foişoreanu www.slideshare.net/michaelasanda

Sound Hlaing Win Maung - Rain