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Hanging by a hair: Flickr photo of the day

A 24-foot-tall boulder, covered in gold leaf, is being held in place by a hair? Yes. It is called Kyaiktiyo Pagoda and it has remained precariously atop Mt. Kyaiktiyo, in Burma (Myanmar) for thousands of years. Technically it hasn’t always been golden, but legend says The Buddha visited the site and found a hermit living there and gave him a hair. The hermit, in turn, took The Buddha’s hair to his king. The decision was made to enshrine the hair under a boulder shaped like the hermit’s head. The belief is that to this very day, the boulder is held in place by The Buddha’s single hair.

At some point a 25-foot pagoda was bravely built atop the boulder and over countless years, pilgrims have covered the huge stone with sheets of gold leaf.

Photographed by Staffan Scherz.

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