Increasing numbers of visitors have been pouring into Myanmar in the two years since the country opened up, many of them to pay homage to thousands of centuries-old pagodas. Some are even believed to contain relics of Buddha, whose teachings have become the faith of Myanmar's majority population.

In the fading sunlight over the golden-domed Shwedagon Pagoda in the middle of Yangon, Myanmar's former capital city, a group of about 20 people sat across