The middle way

The Giant Buddha Statue unveiled
by the Dalai Lama in 1989

Bodhgaya is a small town that lies roughly half way between Varanasi and Kolkata, in the very poor state of Bihar. There are no train stations in Bodhgaya - the closest station is the city of Gaya, 13km away. Yet Bodhgaya is a major stop on the Buddhist pilgrimage route and sees a huge influx of devotees every year. The Dalai Lama makes a yearly pilgrimage to this holiest of Buddhist localities.
There's a reason for this Buddhist devotion - it was here in Bodhgaya that the prince Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment underneath the Bodhi Tree and became the first Buddha. If you're not into Buddhism and visiting eastern temples, then Bodhgaya is not worth a stopover. However, if you're fascinated by eastern cultures and would like to see the place where one of the greatest world religions was founded, then be sure to visit.
Reaching Bodhgaya was quite an experience - 13km in an autorickshaw is not for the feint of heart, and the authorities in Bihar don't make life any easier. Every so often the road is lined with about 15 "rumble strips" that make the sleeping police we favour in Malta look like blips on the tarmac. On an autorickshaw without suspension, and virtually no headroom this is a recipe for sore heads and lots of cricked necks. Once in Bodhgaya our rickshaw picked up about half a dozen tails - on motorbikes, on bicycles, or on foot - all of them desperately trying to get us to follow them to their guest house. Sadly for them they only got a bit of exercise out of us, as we already had a plan for the night - we would be staying at one of the many Buddhist monasteries that offer lodging for travellers. We found lodging in the Tibetan temple where we were given a very clean room with fan and a shared bathroom for a very reasonable Rs200 (€3.20). There wasn't much interaction to be had with the Buddhist monks - they pretty much kept themselves to themselves, but it was nice to have access to the "behind the scenes" life in a monastery - our lodgings were behind the line marked "No entry beyond this point".

Intricate brushwork at
the Bhutanese temple

On the streets of Bodhgaya (its a very small town) we started on the Buddhist temple circuit, visiting the Nipponji (Japanese) and Bhutanese temples. Bodhgaya provides an interesting juxtaposition of the various temples of worship from all over the world, one next to the other. Its like travelling allover south east Asia in a short 2km walk. Though the basic principles are the same, the devil's in the details - every temple has unique aspects, be it the colourful murals, or the manicured gardens, or in the case of the Thai wat, the innumerable reflective panels adorning it!

The Great Awakening

The main attraction in Bodhgaya has to be the Mahabodhi temple complex  where the first Buddha achieved enlightenment. This sprawling, peaceful complex houses a giant wat surrounded by landscaped gardens and a fish pond. It is in this garden, beneath a giant Bodhi tree that Buddha achieved enlightenment. Below the tree you'll find hundreds of Buddhist devotees meditating. The tree isn't the original one that Siddhartha Gautama sat under, but it is a direct descendant. The Emperor Ashoka's wife, jealous of the attention her spouse paid to the sacred tree, suffered a fit worthy of the Queen of Hearts and killed the tree. As luck would have it, a sapling had been taken from the tree many years before and planted in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); and the Bodhi tree that stands in the Mahabodhi temple today has grown from a cutting taken from the Ceylon tree.

Dungeshwari Cave Temples
For our second and final day in Bodhgaya we decided to brave another long rickshaw ride to visit the Dungeshwari caves, where Buddha spent six years meditating in complete isolation, neither supping nor drinking. It took us a good hour to travel the 20 or so kilometers from Bodhgaya to the foot of the hill, but it was a very interesting (albeit back-breaking) ride through paddy fields and rural villages. Lots of friendly smiles and waving children, as well as the occasional water buffalo lying in the middle of the dirt road.

Lemur!

The forest surrounding the hills housing the cave temple quickly thinned out and we were out in the sun for a 20 minute slog up the steep concrete path. Towards the top we found some more trees for cover, and a languid lemur was sitting in the shade munching on some biscuits. As with all temple complexes, we were harangued by the usual beggars and peddlers of incense and prayer flags. Running the gauntlet, we made our way to the temple proper. Temple is a bit of a misnomer - the cave has pretty much been left untouched since the days of Gautama Buddha: a statue representing a very skinny Buddha after his six years of fasting has been placed inside, and a couple of monks are always on duty to make prayers and offerings with Buddhist devotees and curious western travellers.
Five minutes of chanting, a red dot on our forehead, and some crystallised rice in our mouths (straight form the hands of the monk) and we were feeling suitably blessed and ready to head out and face the world. We even, foolishly, thought it might be a good idea to try to climb to the top of the hill. In the tropical heat, wearing flip flops and trying to weave our way through the trees: NO WAY! After about five minutes we desisted and headed back down to our waiting rickshaw for the bumpy ride back into town.

Moving On
Two days in Bodhgaya went quickly by, but I doubt we would have found many other ways to fill our time had we spent longer in the town. Certainly, we could have whittled away the hours sitting in the shade of the Bodhi tree, but there's only so much sitting around that Aaron and I were willing to do on our three week trip to India. We took a rickshaw back to Gaya four our night train to Kolkata that was running four hours late, but understandably so, as a tree had fallen onto the tracks.