The #Buddha in a Tree at Wat Mahathat by @JesseKalisher

The great and enterprising photographer Jesse Kalisher lives in North Carolina (I'm envious) and posts his work, with a story, from time to time. Years back he did a wonderful book of photos of Buddha"

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He writes, in part:

"In 2006, I returned to Thailand for my third time. Since my previous visit, I'd learned about this Buddha embedded into a sacred bodhi tree. Had the tree grown around the Buddha head? Had the Buddha been inserted into the tree when the tree was young or when the tree was mature? I had no idea, but it didn't matter much. I had to see the Buddha and its tree for myself.

To get to see this Buddha took little more than a small dose of determination and the better part of a day. Step one, make my way the central Bangkok train station. Step two, avoid the hustlers, buy my own ticket to Ayutthaya and then settle in for the journey that's little more than an hour. Once there, it's a lazy mile walk through town to the old capital where stands a collection of intriguing ruins. From 1351 to 1767 this was the center of a Siamese empire….."