Myanmar

In Myanmar, pagodas are built from sand.

As rivers and lakes recede during the dry season, sandbanks emerge. During Tabaung, clean pale sand is shaped into pagodas with five narrowing tiers, a form linked to sacred Mount Meru in Buddhist cosmology.

The tradition was once practised both at the royal court and in riverside villages. In Twantay, four villages still build a shared sand pagoda each year, in a festival celebrated for more than 450 years.

The sand is carried in by hand, shaped, decorated and revered as a temporary shrine.