Spread across the beautiful rolling hills of Rakhine in Western Burma, lies a little known archeological site—the medieval town of Mrauk U. Once the capital of the powerful Arakan empire where Portuguese, Dutch and French traders rubbed shoulders with the scholars of Bengal and Mughal princes on the run, Mrauk U is now a sleepy village where goat herders tend to their animals, farmers work their fields and women fetch water from the wells located among the hundreds of old temples and Buddhist pagodas that the Kings of Mrauk U erected during the city’s heydays.

Photo credit: Steffen Korn/Flickr