The enlightenment at the end of the tunnel

---

The one hour estimate that I had been given to get to Varanasi station to catch a 5:10AM train was exceedingly conservative, so I arrived 45 minutes too early. As I was waiting on the platform, I fell into conversation with a South African guy called George, who was tacking a week of relaxation in Varanasi and Bodhgaya on to the end of a business trip. Interestingly, he had attended a Vipassana meditation course in the latter back in 1973, when the place was still a village and had not been fully embraced by the global Buddhist community. We were in different sections of the train, so we arranged to meet up in Gaya and share a rickshaw to Bodhgaya.

Today was my first trip in Sleeper class, which is the lowest class that you can reserve. I had decided to go Sleeper because of the brevity of the journey (less than 4 hours) - all of my previous trips had been at least twice as long so I had wanted the comfort of 2AC. Sleeper is arranged with each cabin containing 2 sets of 3-tier bunks together with a 2-tier bunk on the other side of the aisle. I had been allocated the middle berth of one of the 3-tiers, which is probably the worst one to have, as you don't have either the convenience of being at ground level (for loo access) or the peace and quiet (all relative, of course) of the upper berth. You also can't sit up in it. There was no common language between me and the other inhabitants of my cabin, apart from a few smiles, so the journey passed primarily in the company of my MP3 player.

At Gaya, I met up again with George and we soon got an auto to take us the 30 minutes or so to Bodhgaya. George was eagerly looking at the passing countryside, hoping that at some point he would recognise a landmark, however what had been green fields 30 years ago was now more built-up.

Neither of us had any accommodation booked, so we dropped in at the Deep Guest House on the north edge of town, which was mentioned in both our guidebooks. The rooms looked very clean, especially the attached bathrooms, so we both decided to take rooms here. After breakfast at a nearby tent cafe (which seems to be the norm for cafes here), George retired for a nap while I headed into town to get my bearings.

I realised that I hadn't really looked at the map in the RG, so I sat down on some steps outside the main Mahabodhi Temple to try to figure out the lie of the land. Within seconds, a guy was sitting next to me. Without much preamble, he asked if I could review his CV. This was quite a strange request to make of someone you've never met before, but it sounded fairly harmless so I agreed and asked him to give me a print-out. He said that he actually wanted me to come to his house to do it. I told him that I was on holiday here, possibly only for a day, so I didn't have time for such a trip, but would review either a print-out or something that he could send via e-mail - which I thought was a very fair offer. However he then started trying to persuade me to come to his house, saying I could meet his family and it would be an enriching experience for me as a tourist. I thought this all sounded very suspicious, so I reiterated my offer and he walked off.

After a small boy had scattered nuts on me in an attempt to persuade me to sample his produce, the CV guy returned with a sheet of paper. When I looked closely at it, it was blank. Turned out he actually wanted me to WRITE his CV. At this point I lost patience, and told him that I wasn't a professional CV writer and had no idea why he would choose me to do this for him, as though tourists were all well-versed in this art. It wasn't as though his English was bad either, because it wasn't. He eventually walked off with a very wounded expression, and I was left regretting the fact that, again, I'd been involved in an interaction that didn't leave either party with a satisfactory outcome.

Bodhgaya is the town where Buddha achieved enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Over the last 20 or 30 years, it has become a major pilgrimage centre for Buddhists from all over the world. Most countries with sizeable Buddhist populations have temples here. It is also a religious site for Hindus, as Buddha is considered to be one of the incarnations of Vishnu.

I'd chosen entirely the wrong time to go for a stroll, as not only was it the hottest part of the day, but I was slap bang in the middle of the 2 hour period where all the temples close for lunch. However it was clear that Bodhgaya is very walkable, being only a couple of kilometres square. The place is full of Buddhists, not surprisingly, and at this time of year it's even fuller than usual because the Dalai Lama is putting in an appearance next month. On top of that, there has recently been a big initiation ceremony (Kalachakra) in Tamil Nadu, so many pilgrims will be stopping off here on their way back to the north. Dotted around the place are various temples from different countries, and I can already tell that it will be interesting to see the different architectural styles of the various countries' Buddhists. The Thai temple, for example, looks as though it could have been lifted straight out of the Emerald Palace complex in Bangkok. The Japanese one, though, is very plain by comparison.

I met up with George later in the afternoon and we moseyed over to Mohamed's, a recommended tent restaurant. It was so popular that we had to visit 3 times before we could get a seat. No doubt it's primary listing in the Lonely Planet was responsible for it being packed with foreigners. We had a pleasant dinner then, as neither of us had had a great deal of sleep last night (George had been in the railway retiring rooms), we called it a night.

---

Photos

Tibetan temple
Detail

Tibetan temple
Stupa

Tibetan temple
Detail