Wat Phra That Doi Suthep and Wat Pha Lat

At the top of the mountain above Chiang Mai, at about a thousand metres, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep is reached by a 306-step staircase lined with naga serpents, or by a funicular beside it. The staircase is the frame, and it is calmest early, before the tour vans arrive. On a clear morning the terrace looks out over the whole valley; in the haze months, from about February to April, the valley disappears, and the clearest air usually comes from November to January.

Lower on the slope, Wat Pha Lat is a forest temple with water running over the rocks and the city laid out below. Most people walk up on the Monk's Trail, a forest path from the top of Suthep Road that takes most walkers under an hour; the temple can also be reached by road, which is how the camera bags usually travel, and a walk up in the heat ends in sweat, so the photographer plans which way you arrive. It is small and quiet, and one of the places in Chiang Mai where a proposal works without an audience.

Both are working temples, and Doi Suthep is a place of pilgrimage before it is a viewpoint: shoulders and knees covered, shoes off before the inner terrace around the golden chedi, posed frames kept to the staircase and the outer terrace, and the chedi and the images photographed on their own. Foreign visitors pay an entrance fee at the top. The mountain lies inside Doi Suthep–Pui National Park, and photography done as paid work in a national park can need the park's permission, which the photographer clears in advance.