A white staircase led from the banks of the Mekong River to Pak Ou Caves

If you follow the Mekong upstream for about two hours from Luang Prabang, the river eventually guides you to a cleft in a limestone cliff—the entrance to the Pak Ou Caves. I hired a small wooden boat and let it rattle its way along the water, the engine humming a sleepy monotone. The forests on both banks seemed to sink into an afternoon nap, barely stirring. The Mekong is the great artery of Laos; it carries fish, monks, market goods, and—on slow days—whatever fantasies a traveler happens to bring aboard.

As we approached the caves, a pale staircase appeared between folds of gray rock, as if someone had slipped a spine into the mountain. To pay your respects to the Buddha here, it seems a little climbing is required. No one quite knows why so many Buddha statues ended up in this remote place. Legend claims a Laotian king once donated the first figures, and others followed in devotion. A less romantic explanation might be that people simply ran out of shelf space at home and decided to relocate their surplus divinities.

Inside, the caves were cool and smelled faintly of candle smoke mingled with the dust of uncounted years. In the dimness, hundreds of Buddha images crowded together—large ones, tiny ones, gilded, weathered, crooked, serene. They were not arranged so much as accumulated, as if the Buddhas themselves had grown tired of an endless celestial meeting and collectively slipped away to hide out in this rocky chamber.

Pak Ou Caves on Google Map

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