Photos show boat races during Buddhist religious celebrations in Myanmar

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INLE LAKE, Myanmar (AP) — Hundreds of waterborne spectators gathered Friday to watch boat races on Myanmar’s Inle Lake, the highlight of the annual Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival.

The festival, held on the mountain-fringed lake in southern Shan state, is one of Myanmar’s most important Buddhist religious celebrations. But it is also splendid fun, with teams of 25 to 100 rowers splashing past cheering onlookers aboard their own boats. The teams compete in long, narrow, decorated vessels on what is the country’s second-largest freshwater lake.

What makes the event especially thrilling is that the rowing is carried out by crews who stand with one leg wrapped around a single oar, a style unique to the area’s Intha ethnic minority.

The event is part of a more than two week-long celebration in which four Buddha images from the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda are carried on an ornate barge — complete with a golden image of the mythical Karaweik bird on its bow — and paraded to 21 villages around the lake so people can pay homage to them.

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This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.