On the pilgrimage trail

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6-20 September

Well, you know you have been traveling a nice long while when you have the offer to travel with two Vietnamese monks with limited English skills to one of the poorest and most dangerous states in India, with none of you having a guidebook, and it sounds like the most natural and obvious thing to do.

And with the acceptance of that offer Dang and I took the bus from Dharamsala to Delhi to meet his brother, sister and cousin, who are all living in Delhi and studying at the University of Delhi. Dang´s brother and cousin are a monk and nun, while his sister had recently arrived to begin studies at the university. Dang´s cousin was an AMAZING cook and for two days she cooked every meal for us - delicious fresh Vietnamese food. Every dish was different an she said that if I stayed there a month she could cook a different dish for every meal! I took advantage of the time in Delhi to see a little more of the city but also to go to the US Embassy to have more pages added to my passport. Once I got to the embassy it took only 30 minutes for this service and it was completely free - a very nice and confidence-inspiring experience in our embassies!

Afterwards Dang, Van and I boarded a train for Varanasi to begin a Buddhist pilgrimage to the four most important Buddhist sites - Lumbini (where Buddha was born), Bodhgaya (where he found enlightenment), Sarnath (where he gave his first teaching), and Kushinigar (where he died). I would see only Sarnath and Bodhgaya while they would visit all four sites. After arriving in Varanasi we took a short rickshaw ride to Sarnath for the day. This was very nice because it was an oasis of calm, cleanliness and green in the midst of all the craziness surrounding Varanasi. Sarnath consists of the remains of a large Buddhist monastery that date to about the 3rd century AD. Quite happily it also boasts a nice museum with a massive air conditioning system. At the end of the day we got back on a train and headed overnight to Gaya, and from there it was another short rickshaw drive to Bodhgaya, where I had visited the year before.

We stayed several days at a guesthouse run by a Chinese temple and visited the main temple and some of the foreign temples that have been built in the area. We also took a sidetrip to Nalanda University - one of the biggest universities in the world in those days - and to Rajagha, where Buddha spent much time during his 45 years of teaching. It was during one of these trips that I smashed my personal record for people in/on a rickshaw - 14! After Rajagha I parted ways with the Vietnamese monks (as they went on to Kushinigar) to meet up with the crazy Italians in Varanasi.

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