A week after the Taungbyone festival the Yadanagu pwe, near Amarapura just south of Mandalay’s suburbs begins. The lady of Poppa, the mother of Taungbyone Brothers, out of maternal love goes to Taungbyone from Poppa each year for the festival. In ancient times she travelled on an oxcart; but more recently, she goes by raft up the river swollen at that time by the monsoon rains. She stops over at Yadanagu as it was here that she originally learnt of her son’s execution. The festival lasts six or seven days and spreads out from the High Palace to the Middle one and ends at the lower Palace which was built by an Indian. The palace dignitaries, four queens and four ministers concurrently hold their offices at both Taungbyone and at Yadanagu. An exiled foreigner of royal origins, noticeable by hair style, appears, this is Thoe Saung, taken by King Alaungphya as a minor wife. She may have been a Portuguese girl kidnapped from a merchant ship.
The day of ablutions gives way to a procession of boats on the river. Poppa Meidaw and U Min Kyaw embark along with the orchestra floating on a barge pulled by oarsmen. There is great jolly on the trip, there and back. The atmosphere is as wild as at Taungbyone. There is only one interesting incident on the final day. Homage is paid to a Bagan surrounded by the floods water of that time. Everyone pullsup their bongyis and wades out in the mud to place their offering on one of the altars that cover the tree’s trunk and branches. Then the Taungbyone Brothers return to their territory, as does their mother to her’s. Meanwhile the nat-kadaw move on to their next stop on the annual nat circuit.
