Wat Saket Ratchawora Mahawihan

This guide to Wat Saket in Bangkok starts at the Ghost Gate, the city gate nearest here that every corpse once passed through on the way to the temple grounds. It follows the cholera epidemic of 1820, when more than thirty thousand deaths overwhelmed the cremation fires and vultures gathered so thickly that Bangkokians coined a phrase for them, and the failed attempt by King Rama III to raise a great chedi on the same waterlogged ground. You'll pass stone sculptures of those birds near the base of the hill. Count the steps as you climb.