Gaya and Bodhgaya

The general class train to Gaya was crowded. We did not care much, though, We were happy to not be walking, to not be wearing our bags, to be leaving Patna, and to have a fresh start to our adventure. We had tried something different, and it didn’t work out as planned. That’s how this kind of traveling goes sometimes. Having a half-baked and somewhat impractical plan for travel can be hard, but then again, following the rules and doing what’s easy rarely results in the most memorable experiences. The risk of by-the-seat-of-your-pants travel has its rewards. We just did not reap them this time.

We arrived in Gaya in the late evening, at maybe 10 or 11. It was cool, and the slight chill was refreshing. People hounded us outside the station to take us to Bodhgaya, most people’s first stop after arriving in Gaya. We did not want to move anymore, though, so we looked for a place to stay for the night. It was pretty easy, especially with the help of a kind young man we had met on the train. After checking in, we ate at the café below our room, then turned in for the night.

While Gaya is actually a fascinating and religiously important city, it seems to be overlooked by most travelers passing through. This is mostly because it serves simply as a transit hub for people on their way to Bodhgaya, the birth place of Buddhism. While we were heading that way too, we decided to take the day to explore Gaya. In the morning, we took an auto rickshaw to the old part of town along the Falgu River. In a lot of ways, Gaya was like a mini Varanasi. The old part of town consisted of narrow roads going between ancient buildings and temples, all hugging the banks of the river. There were people making pilgrimages and bathing in the river, as well as people performing cremations. The Vishnupadh Temple, built in the 18^th century, sits along the river and contains giant footprint in basalt that is believed to be the footprint of Vishnu.

The river was low enough that it would have been possible to cross it without getting more than our knees wet. For a while we just wandered around the dry part of the river bed, watching kids splash in the water, adults performing pujas, and funeral pyres burning in the distance. It felt remote and peaceful, and I was glad we had not rushed off to Bodhgaya so quickly. After a little more walking around the surrounding neighborhood, we decided to head back.

We weren’t sure how to get back, so we just walked in the general direction we thought we needed to go. It didn’t seem like any transportation was going back to our part of town either. At one point we saw a firework shop, so we needed to stop and make some purchases. The clerk helped us pick out a decent-looking little cherry bomb. I set it on top of a concrete block on the opposite side of the street, lit it and ran. The fuse ran down and nothing happened. I wasn’t about to try to light it again, so the clerk gave us another one. This time neither of us wanted to light it, so a nearby boy got to do the honors. He lit it and before he could get more than the a couple steps away, it exploded with force that I could not have imagined was possible from a bomb that size. Immediately after the blast (which was probably the loudest I had ever heard from a firework) everything seemed to fall silent. Whatever street noise had been going on was now replaced with nothing but a slight ringing in all of our ears.

Photo by Joe McKernan

Back on the road, we were wondering how long walking would take us. We knew it was really far, so I mentioned trying our thumbs out and hitching a ride. Just then, a big tractor pulling a trailer full of sand. I waved at the guys driving it, and they slowed down. I motioned that we wanted to jump onto the back. One of them seemed a little uptight, but the other guy realized the humor in the situation, and told us to climb in. And there we were, hitchhiking on a big pile of sand. We didn’t really know where we were going, but it seemed like it was the right direction. We chugged along slowly for 20 or 30 minutes until the guys arrived at their construction site and we hopped out. We were completely lost, but it still felt like we knew the general direction. I don’t know how much time or effort our hitching saved us, but it was fun enough to make it worth it.

Photo by Joe McKernan

We picked up our bags and found a bus that was headed to Bodhgaya. We had heard that it was necessary to hire an autorickshaw driver to get there, but that seemed crazy. Luckily enough for us we managed to get one of the few buses that goes between the two places every day.

Bodhgaya is strange. It is not much of a town. Most of the buildings are temples and hotels. Most of the traffic is made of tour buses and a few auto rickshaws. It is spread out and packed with tourists and pilgrims from all over the world. It is a major pilgrimage site for Buddhists as it was there that Prince Guatama Siddhartha meditated under the Bodhi tree for three days and achieved enlightenment 2,500 years ago. It is one of the few places I have been where most of the foreign tourists were not westerners. There were people from Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, and any part of the world where Buddhism had reached. The most striking pilgrims, of course, were those from Tibet, in their maroon robes and shaved heads. This was the time of year when most Tibetans would make their journey to Bodhgaya. There was even a row makeshift Tibetan eateries that opened and closed with the seasons. For a town that seems to exist only because of a tree that happens to be there, there was a lot going on.

Finding an affordable room was a small challenge as the standards for hotels here were much higher than in other parts of India. After shopping around, though, we found something that met our needs and we were on our way. We wandered for a bit, looking for food and getting a feel for the town. We walked near the entrance for the 1,500 year old Mahabodhi Temple and were not surprised to get hassled by every kind of person one would expect outside of a major tourist attraction. Scammers trying to offer you something you don’t need, aggressive souvenir hawkers, and of course children and horribly disfigured people begging. We didn’t want to visit the temple on a whim and decided to come back later.

Mahabododhi Temple. Photo by Joe McKernan

Pilgrims circle the temple. Photo by Joe McKernan

When we did come back in the evening, the temple was lit beautifully and was swathed in a peaceful atmosphere that made me glad that we had waited. We took our shoes off and walked toward the main part of the temple. It was refreshing to be able to see a religious or historical site in India without being charged for entrance. There was a group of pilgrims sitting outside the temple, chanting. The sound was beautiful as we approached. A small crowd was assembled outside the main temple door, waiting to get in. Upon entering the small room, we were confronted by a large, golden Buddha. In front of it, we saw the end of a devotional chant by a group of pilgrims. The whole thing felt shockingly real and I almost felt uncomfortably out of place as it seemed that we were about the only people there as tourists rather than pilgrims. After walking back out, we began to circle the temple clockwise. There were lots of people meditating around the edge, some of whom were sitting inside little free-standing dome-shaped mosquito nets, to keep the insects away. We took our time around the temple. We did a little bit of meditating and Joe took some time with his journal. Around the back stood the Bodhi tree. The original tree no longer exists, but this one was grown from a sapling from a tree in Sri Lanka, which itself was grown from a sapling from the original Bodhi tree. So there was stood, under the Bodhi tree, in the exact spot where Siddhartha had achieved enlightenment and set motion to the start of Buddhism, which would quickly spread all the way from Afghanistan to Japan.

We spent most of the next day wandering from temple to temple. Bodhgaya is like a little UN of Buddhist countries. Almost every country with a sizable Buddhist population was represented by a temple in the style of its origin. Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan, Tibet, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka and probably a few others were all represented. It was fascinating to walk into something like a Thai temple, and suddenly feel like I really was back in Thailand. The Japanese temple was soothingly simple and minimalist, which contrasted the lavishly colorful and ornately decorated Nepalese or Tibetan temples. The one thing that they all had in common was a depiction of Siddhartha reaching enlightenment under the Bodhi tree.

Inside the Tibetan temple. Photo by Joe McKernan

Photo by Joe McKernan

Even monks need ice cream. Photo by Joe McKernan

Don't forget the mosque. Bodhgaya's mosque was fairly lackluster. Photo by Joe McKernan

A hot day calls for some extreme water drinking. Photo by Joe McKernan

We also paid a visit to the 80-foot Buddha statue that was built in 1989. It was possibly one of the newest religious monuments I had seen in India.

Photo by Joe McKernan

Bodhgaya was interesting but there did not seem to be much beyond plenty of temples, and we were ready to go after a couple days. Some westerners seemed to love the town and stayed for long periods of time, usually to volunteer or study Buddhism or meditation. We met one woman at our guesthouse who would spend months at a time in Bodhgaya and had been doing it for several years. She had just returned and was so excited to be back, just as we were feeling good about leaving.

Getting out, however, was not as easy as it should have been. We went to the bus park, and everybody told us there were no buses going where we were going and we would have to hire an auto rickshaw. This was frustrating, as it really felt like the auto rickshaw drivers were scamming us. We had arrived by bus, so why couldn’t we leave by bus? Eventually a friendly westerner, eating at a nearby stall, told us to speak with his friend who was serving the food, since he was supposedly a reliable guy. He confirmed that there would not be any buses going where we were going, and that we would have to get a rickshaw out to the next highway. This was followed by intense bargaining, and us giving up since we could not get a fair price. We walked all the way through the long town, every rickshaw driver trying to pick us up, but demanding too much. We had walked for a couple of km before a guy met our price and we were on our way.

We were now standing on the side of the Grand Trunk Road, waiting for a bus among a small crowd in the dusty heat. We explained to our fellow waiters that we were trying to get to Daltonganj in the neighboring state, Jharkhand. We were done with Bihar and wanted to see something new. The plan was to visit a national park, though we really had very little planned. After a few busses passed, someone pointed one out that was going where we wanted. It looked crowded, so we climbed up top, and were on our way, Happily waving goodbye to Bihar.