Christopher Reynolds’ Where Am I?

This golden spire, about 320 feet high on a hilltop, is the centerpiece of a major Asian city.

Known as the Shwedagon Pagoda, it’s a key Buddhist site in a nation not known for its religiosity – in a region recently beset by natural disaster. (This is a pre-disaster shot, but apparently the pagoda survived well.)

Back in the 1880s, Rudyard Kipling called it “a beautiful winking wonder that blazed in the sun, of a shape that was neither Muslim dome nor Hindu temple-spire. It stood upon a green knoll, and below it were lines of warehouses, sheds, and mills. Under what new god, thought I, are we irrepressible English sitting now?”

For you, the question is simpler: What city is this?