Doi Suthep Hiking Trail (Wat Pha Lat)

This guide to the Doi Suthep hiking trail and Wat Pha Lat in Chiang Mai follows a white elephant set loose in the forest in the 1300s by a Lanna king, carrying a relic said to be a splinter of the Buddha's own shoulder, with the animal's resting places left to decide where new temples would rise. It traces the monastery built where the elephant first paused beside a stream on sloping rock, and the centuries of monks and pilgrims who rested there climbing toward the mountain's summit. Pause at the stream running over that same sloping rock, the spot that gave the temple its name.