The story
Kakku Pagoda Festival in Kakku
The Kakku Pagoda Festival is a nine-day harvest festival of the Pa-O people, held during Tabaung, around March, at the Kakku Pagodas, a hillside complex of 2,478 stupas south of Inle Lake. Pa-O villagers arrive by ox-drawn cart in traditional dress to dance, offer food and give alms, while the grounds become a market for produce, crafts and goods.
South of Inle Lake, on a hillside dotted with 2,478 individual stupas, the Kakku Pagodas form one of Shan State's most striking religious sites, and once a year, during the Tabaung lunar month, roughly March, that quiet hillside becomes the center of a nine-day festival deeply rooted in Pa-O ethnic culture.