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Leaving Khajuraho turned out to be just as difficult as getting there... A six-hour bus ride to Satna, a mere 100km away — that's an average of 16km/h. Followed by a ten-hour train ride with my seat reservation double-booked. I managed to get a sleeper about halfway through, and reached the city of Gaya at 4AM. I finished the night at the hotel across from the train station, a miserable pit with sheets that looked like they were not changed since the hotel opened up. At 8AM I was woken up to see if I had any laundry... I tried to give the bed sheets to the cleaner, but he didn't see the irony. I left soon after that to finish my journey to Bodhgaya, an uneventful half-hour rickshaw ride through Bihar, the poorest state in India...
The village of Bodhgaya is the holiest Buddhist pilgrimage center. This is where prince Siddhartha Gautama was enlightened, while sitting under the Bodhi tree, and became the Buddha — the Enlightened one. This happened around 500BC. The Mahabodhi Temple is the most important temple, built around the spot where Buddha was sitting. The Bodhi Tree is still there, sort of... After 2500 years its not the same tree.
The original Bodhi tree was cut down by the wife of Mauryan Emperor Ashoka around 250BC, because she was jealous of the time he spent doing his Buddhist devotions. The story goes that the roots were nurtured back to life with milk and the tree grew again. Ashoka's daughter took a sapling of the revived tree to Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka where it still stands today. After the original Bodhi tree died in Bodhgaya, a sapling was brought back from Sri Lanka.
There are many temples in the village, built by many Buddhist nations: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, China, Japan, Korea, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam. I found it very interesting to look at the architecture of the temples, and compare the representations of Buddha. In fact, the variety of temples is what attracted me here in the first place.
My stay in Bodhgaya was very peaceful, in perfect harmony with the atmosphere of the village. A bit of walking around, a bit of reading, some hanging around the Mahabodhi Temple. And a good restaurant by the hotel, with Tibetan noodle soup as a change from the usual Indian fare. In fact, I was reflecting ironically that if I am not careful, I will turn into a Buddhist monk: I eat vegetarian — there's only chicken and I am trying to avoid the avian flu; I am not drinking — it's not fun anymore to drink alone; I am not smoking — well, at least for a few days now; and I am not having much of a sex life — do I need to expand on that one? In any case I don't have much of a choice: the whole town shuts down by 10PM.
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