Attaining enlightenment... or not.

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We travelled overnight by train from Kolkata to Gaya which was a fairly pleasant journey. We got chatting to an Indian couple sharing our compartment and it turns out his son was studying in Bristol, small world.
From Gaya we got an auto-rickshaw to the town of Bodghgaya, the spot where Budda attained enlightenment under a Boddhi tree. It is a pilgrimage site for Buddhists and has lots of different temples representing Buddhists around the world. The Dalai Lama is said to visit every winter.
I think our expectation was a bit high, we were expecting a peaceful, relaxing town and got anything but.
The temples themselves are beautiful but as soon as you step out into the road you get a constant barrage of people wanting something from you. The most annoying is young boys wanting to be your "friend" or just wanting to practice their English. It always ends up that they want you to buy or give them something. This to me seems more dishonest. I dont mind being asked for money but I'd rather they just came out with it and stop wasting my time.
We also got ripped off with a train ticket which we purchased in Bodgaya so we didn't get the best impression of the town.

I know the Americans get a bit of stick for being loud tourists but the Indians win hands down. When we visited the Mahabodhi temple, which was built on the spot that Buddha did his thing, I could not get over how loud the Indian tourists were, even though there were signs eveywhere asking people to be silent. I'm not a Buddhist but when you are visiting a holy place of any religion I believe that you should respect their customs and beliefs.
Under the Boddhi tree a ceremony was taking place where people who had come to the temple on a pilgrimage were handing over new robes to one of the monks. The ceremony involved lots of chanting and meditating and was beautiful to watch. However the peacefulness was soon shattered by a mans phone going off. Instead of looking highly embarassed as most people would he answered with a loud "HELLO!". I kept looking round for the cameras thinking it was a Dom Jolly sketch but this guy was for real.
We also went to sit in on a zen meditation class in the Japanese temple (when in Rome and all that). It was packed and we arrived late so we just sat at the back and watched to see what it was all about. It was mostly westerners and I assume beginners so I was quite suprised to see the monk in charge walking around with a ruler checking how straight peoples backs were. He mostly just tapped them on the shoulder and held the ruler against their back to straighten them out but one man obviously didn't come up to scratch because he raised his ruler above his head and smacked him over the head with it! We left not feeling particularly zen.
We had been planning to stay in Bodhgaya for a few days but decided to leave as it was wearing us down. Then started our whole palava with the overpriced train ticket. Lets just say we were happy to finally arrive at our next destination.

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