Hotel Tathagat International Bodh Gaya

... trains it was the only choice available. In most countries you might expect the train station to be pretty empty at such an early hour in a pretty small city (by India standards) but not so. When I walked outside the main terminal into the night I was greeted by the incredible sight of literally hundreds of bodies huddled up sleeping on the asphalt parking lot in front of the station. There were also dozens upon dozens of wide awake folks milling ...

We stopped off and stayed the night in BodhGaya and traveled the next day to Gaya, where Siddhattha Gotama meditated beneath a bodhi tree and attained enlightenment, to become Lord Buddha.

It's a beautiful place where we sat for just one afternoon and watched devoted Buddhists gather to meditate at the sacred spot under the grand old tree. Neither Mish or myself are Buddhist, but it didn't detract from our experience and we took pleasure ...

... tried to talk to us in English, and then switched to a rusty Spanish when they heard Judith and I talking. It was obvious from the beginning that they were not really interested in us, but in some kind of game or scam they were playing. Brisech distracted them for a few minutes while Judith and I viewed the interior of the Temple. But, as we were leaving, one smart-mouth punk tried to convince me to go around to the backside of the temple with ...

... in a convection oven with the fan blowing. So, back at the hotel, we check in and are shown to our room. This room leaves a lot to be desired. It was clean but seedy looking, the furniture and decorations are something like you might find in a youth hostel. The bellboy pushed the 2 twin beds together to make a king size bed and explained that all of the rooms had 2 twin beds. They might as well left have them separate since the sheet arrangement did ...

... restaurants play nightly showings. We never actually watched it there. For some reason two nights that we were in Udaipur we had dinner with Indian guys who paid for our dinner which was pretty funny. Our last night there before we took the train we went out to dinner with a girl who was staying at our hotel. Her name was Mary, she was a lovely girl with dreadlocks. We definitly related to her and wished that we had met her sooner because she was so much like us. Bunty took us to the ...

... it at a fancy hotel in town. SUCKAS! ;) What else ... There are an amazing range of temples in the city here with each culture offering their own vision of the Buddha from their own cultural standpoint (e.g. he has more slanted eyes in Japan, thinner in Bhutan, etc). Its fascinating to see the contrasts. By far the most impressive temple was the Bhutanese one, where there was this extraordinary detail in the paintings and color scheme on the walls. The entire place ...

... under the Bodhi tree in 663 BC. The temple was built in the 6th Century AD atop the site of a temple that was erected by Emperor Ashoka 800 years earlier (200 BC). However, amazingly, there are still railings that surround the site that date from 184-72 BC. Clearly, this is cool (and old) Buddha ****. The original Bodhi tree that the Buddha meditated under and where he formed his philosophy of life was cut down by Emperor Ashoka's wife (what the deal was about that one ...

After visiting Sarnath, and hearing about the rest of the 'Buuddhist Circuit', I decided to check out Bodhgaya, a small town about 6 hours out of Varanasi, in Bihar. Bodhgaya is famous and a very important place for buddhists because it was here that Buddha acheived enlightenment, under the famous Bodhi tree. The town exists now as a gathering place for Buddhists from around the world, and ...

... time. I would start each day by filtering five liters of water, which would last me until the afternoon. The kids seemed to take an interest in the childhood of Abraham Lincoln, and while they never said this specifically, I think the story of a poor kid living in a cabin eventually becoming a president gave them motivation to work hard. They saw an education as a gift and knew that an example of not having one was simply a look out the window to the peasants working ...

... south and east of the bodhi tree enclosure, near the places where the bodhisattva earlier had bathed and eaten Sujata's offering. All were marked by stupas. Here two passing merchants, Trapusha and Bhallika, offered the Buddha the first food since his enlightenment. Seeing that he needed a vessel to receive it, the four guardians of the directions each offered precious bowls, but he would only accept one of stone from each. He pressed the four bowls together ...