Many adventure stories such as the “King Solomon’s Mines” have played on the imagination of many people. In this century of high technology and world travel, discovering sites lost in time is only possible in the movies. Or is it?

For many years, the remote area inhabited by the Pa O minority race has been inaccessible to the outsider. Few people even of Taungyi, the nearest big town and capital of the Shan State, know about it. They have heard of it ... stories are told and retold about a complex of thousands of pagodas hidden deep in the countryside. If a few know about it, fewer still know where it is located.

The Pa O are a hard-working, religious and simple people, good hearted and honest. They are also very traditionalist, as they still adhere to their own customs and costumes. Their clothing is distinctive and most elegant, for they wear a full dress ( long skirts for women and loose trousers for men) of dark blue wool. They all wear turbans loosely wrapped around their heads, either of hand-woven cotton or colourful towels.

Their livelihood is mainly farming. In the countryside where they live, the best garlic in the whole of Myanmar is produced, so they are prosperous. Even then, they do not show off their wealth in any way. Their houses are large and well built, but out of natural materials and not of concrete. Their land is beautiful with rolling green hills and clumps of tall bamboo.

The Kekku pagoda complex was first seen by a westerner in 1996. She was a film producer making documentaries on the culture of Myanmar, and at that time she was working out of Taungyi for her well-known film on the Shan people. Together with a Shan friend, she gained the trust of a Pa O gentleman who took them to Kekku. Earlier, because of instability in the region, no one was permitted to travel in these parts.

Kekku is 28 miles south of Taungyi. About half of the way, there is a tar road and beyond, a dirt road. Strangely enough, the dirt road, a rich red colour is very smooth. Green fields stretch for miles on each side. A long row of tall, thick-leafed trees, in pairs, disappear over the far hills: it is a shady road with trees planted by a monk to connect his village to a pagoda at the other end.

The red road twists and turns over the hills; there is also a train you can take from Taungyi.

Two hours later, turning a corner into a valley, you suddenly come upon this wonder sight of thousands of small pagodas clustered close to each other, surrounding a bigger stups set on a rise. Everything is still: the huge trees nearby cast their shades on bees and butterflies fluttering in the meadows. There is no village nearby: it is like a lost paradise discovered.

The architecture of the pagodas look like they are from the 16th. Century. The Pa O legends say the number of the pagodas is 7622. They are almost all decorated with floral designs or figures of celestial beings or bird-men climbing up the sides. The ground between the temple is cleared away regularly by the guards who live in a huge pavilion near the gate. You can wander in the silence and the peace and almost feel the spirits of past devotees come and go.

They may have been only recently discovered by the outside world but for centuries they have been the personal, intimate place of worship for the Pa O people. Every year in March, they have a pagoda festival, and then it is a miracle: for tens of thousands of Pa O devotees come from all over the region, by cart, by river, or by walking through the woods. They bring candles and cakes to offer at the shrines, and they wrap the images in small saffron-coloured robes. They stay just outside the pagoda compound, camping under the trees. They cook and eat, they shop at the many bamboo stalls set up as the festival market. There are performances by dancers and musicians, all traditional, which they sit and enjoy for hours.

After the full moon of Tabaung (March) the festival is over: and suddenly the people are gone, the place is deserted and still. It waits in peace for the next year, this splendid group of pagodas, and they live in the hearts of the Pa O. They will live in yours, too, once you see them in their beautiful loneliness.