Mount Popa is an extinct volcano rising out of the dry zone of central Myanmar, and more than two hundred springs keep its slopes green in a plain of dry thorn. Beside it stands Taung Kalat, a sheer volcanic plug with a monastery of white halls and gold stupas covering the whole summit. A roofed stairway of 777 steps winds up the rock face from the village, and you climb it barefoot. Shoes and socks both come off at the bottom, because the whole flight counts as sacred ground and in Myanmar socks count as footwear. Troops of macaques work the handrails and ledges and will help themselves to an open bag, so nothing travels loose in your hands. The hermit U Khandi, who died in 1949, spent his last years keeping these steps in repair.
At the foot of the rock, in a mirror-tiled hall, the thirty-seven nats stand in rows around you, faces gilded, dressed in silk and hung with banknotes that petitioners pin to them. Nearly every one was a real person who met a violent or unjust end and was enshrined rather than forgotten. Among them is Popa Medaw, the flower-eating ogress of this mountain, who fell in love with the man sent up here to gather blossoms for the king of Bagan. He was executed for neglecting the job, she died of grief, and their two sons were executed later. Almost nobody climbs Popa proper, the cone behind the famous rock. The path through its spring-fed forest puts you above Taung Kalat, small and gold against the dry country. On cold, clear dawns fog fills the low ground and drowns everything but the plug, which stands out of the white with its stupas lit. The barefoot rule is law, not courtesy. From 1916 Burmese Buddhists campaigned against Europeans keeping their shoes on in pagoda precincts, the dispute turned violent, and the ban that followed in 1919 was the first issue to unite the country against British rule.