Benares and Bodhgaya

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Looking over my last blog entries, I realize how bitter and unthankful I sound. The opportunity given to me is an amazing one, and I am thankful everyday for having been able to take advantage of it. I have a very distinctive love-hate relationship with Delhi, and with India as a whole. Many parts are utterly incomprehensible to me, and at times deeply troubling. These aspects of India convince that when I get back to the United States, I will never again return to the subcontinent.
Then there are parts of India that are strangely beautiful and wonderful. It is at times when I find these experiences that I think, maybe, in about thirty-five years, I could come back to this place.
I consider both Bodhgaya and Benares squarely in the latter category.
I took a train to Bodhgaya about a week ago, eager to have a more meaningful excursion than the Golden Triangle trip, or at least more independent one. My roommate tagged along and we shared a hotel room but not much else, using the days to explore Bodhgaya and Benares by ourselves.
The train to Gaya (Bodhgaya was just a short rickshaw ride away) was the first sleeper train I had been on in India. It was much less glamorous than I had imagined, with uncomfortable bunk beds and infamous delays. But it also brought one of the best opportunities to meet Indians. After all, five Indians and myself were stuck together in a five foot by seven foot room for fifteen hours. One would have to extremely anti-social to not engage in at least a little friendly conversation. It also gave me an opportunity to practice my Hindi with one other traveler in particular, who was intrigued by the book I was reading: “The Art of Happiness: Conversations with the Dalai Lama.” Actually, it was a dialect of Hindi known as “slurrindi,” and it was all that the drunk man spoke. He needed to repeat each phrase several times before I got the gist of it, but I eventually did, and we had a very interesting conversation about the similarities and differences between the Buddha and Plato. This was exactly the kind of conversation I had expected to have on an Indian sleeper train, or at least the same philosophical subject matter I had expected. He promptly forgot my name and then fell asleep, but I was satisfied nonetheless.
We reached Gaya three hours late, but I had been able to get a decent night’s sleep on the train, so I was ready to make the move to Bodhgaya. Good thing, because Gaya did not have much to offer tourists besides headaches and scams, and neither promised a photo opportunity. We picked up another foreigner, a Japanese kid who spoke no Hindi and only a speck of English, and jumped in an auto-rickshaw to Bodhgaya.
Bodhgaya is in the region known as Bihar, a beautifully green but hugely impoverished state in the northeast of India. The real attraction to me, however, and millions of Buddhists around the world, was that Bodhgaya is the supposed place where the Buddha achieved Enlightenment. There is a Bodhi tree you can go see under which the Buddha sat and became the Buddha; or at least it’s an offshoot of the original Bodhi tree. The original was destroyed by Ashoka, who, oddly enough, then decided he liked Buddhism and so had a wonderful temple built in honor of it. But Bodhgaya is more than just a site in the record books. It is one of, if not the, holiest place for Buddhists, and so attracts a constant stream of pilgrims. It is also a wonderfully peaceful and serene small town, with dozens of gorgeous Buddhist temples and a fertile forest surrounding it. The town itself was more or less built around one road that stretched maybe five kilometers. The road was not too busy, especially for a pilgrimage site, and was very pleasant to walk. I saw all of the temples and monasteries in a few hours, but I felt that I could have spent days just absorbing the spiritual energy and quietude of the place. In a word, it was all very Buddhist. And most of all, everyone was very nice. People were curious as to what I was doing in Bodhgaya, and why I had such a big backpack, and whether or not I liked “the King of Pop.” I felt as though people wanted to talk to me because they were curious. And to get money. But it was better than talking to me just to get money. I was in high spirits.
It was also very poor. There were a fair amount of beggars with unnatural deformities, as is the staple with religious places in India. The town itself, besides being a center for Buddhist education, does not have much other industry besides farming, and in the case of India, farming is often a risky gamble. Just this year, the monsoon was almost a month late. The real draw of the town is its tourism, which funds most of the schools. The farmers in the surrounding villages all send their children into Bodhgaya to receive an education. I found it odd, or at least sad, that nations from around the world, including Japan, Thailand, Bhutan, and Bangladesh, devoted large amounts of money to building such amazing places of worship, and yet the schools were generally left unfunded. Seeing as I went in early September, the tourist season had not even begun. When it is not tourist season, the schools are left helpless and without a dime, for the most part. Thus, I was met by many young children asking me for money to buy dictionaries and whatnot. I was eve asked on several occasions to teach. When I asked what I would teach, they responded with “anything.”
I decided to visit one of these schools. It was housed in a four-story building that looked as though it had been bombed, missing whole wholes and a roof. Inside, there was no plumbing and no electricity, all though they did have one computer that a nice European woman had donated (I have no idea what they did with a computer and no electricity). There were outhouses overflowing on the second floor. An iron grating on each floor covered a large hole running up through the middle of the building, a grating that a small child could have easily slipped through. There were chalkboards but not chalk. Yet children could be found in every room, smiling and perfectly happy to be there. I was told by the principal that about 300 students went to school in this dilapidated building, of which about 50 were orphaned and lived there. I had not seen any beds. But everyone was so positively ecstatic to see me (probably because I had money, I told myself. But also, I think, because they were not as miserable as National Geographic would have one believe; they just were in need). I exchanged phone numbers with a few of the older children and the principal, than left a donation and headed out. The most impressionable thing that occurred, however, was what the kids said to me as I left: “Don’t forget about us!”
From the school, I headed to the Mahabodhi Temple. It was dusk, and I could see the glimmering lights from across the town. The temple rises above the surrounding area, a great and beautiful stone structure that seems uncharacteristic of the kind of simplicity that the Buddha preached. But it is elegant and entrancing. The grounds of the temple were full of prayer flags, walkways, meditation gardens, and a few relics of the Buddha himself. There were many monks in orange garb, Buddhist and Hindu, chanting and sitting in reverent awe. Bodhgaya is also a pilgrimage place for Hindus, as the Buddha is seen as one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu. Then there was the Bodhi tree itself. Even if was not an offshoot of the original tree, it would be an impressive tree, stretching beneath the temple as though to reach out and touch everyone who laid eyes on it. It was especially wonderful in the dark, accentuated by the phosphorescent lighting around the temple. It looked somewhere between a figment of Tim Burton’s imagination and an Indian Yaksi spirit in earthly manifestation. Better yet, it is impossible to describe, but a primordial and haunting feeling swelled inside me as I sat before the tree, the sound of monks chanting all around me. It was one of most extraordinary and mystical experiences I have had thus far in India.
I walked back toward the lodge in a kind of stupor. I briefly entertained a few local teenagers who wanted to know how to get into the United States, as though it were some kind of a club (which I suppose it is), and then ate dinner at a Thai restaurant in silence. When I reached the room, my roommate and the Japanese fellow were already asleep, sound I climbed into bed and dreamed about the Bodhi tree and the grand temple above it.
The next morning, we woke up early, said goodbye to the Japanese tourist, and headed to the bus stand a kilometer outside of town. We were to catch the bus to Benares, or Varanasi at 7 AM. It was the only bus to Benares from Bodhgaya, however, and so we arrived early and were careful to not miss it. The colorful yellow bus arrived a half hour late of course, and we piled in. We were scheduled to reach Benares in about seven hours. It took eleven. We stopped at several rest stops, or more to the point, whenever the bus driver felt like it. At one point, we were at a rest stop for an hour, during which time the driver got a haircut. I wondered what the point of a bus schedule is in India, but I did not let the experience damper my newfound Enlightenment. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. I ate my fill of samosas and chai for the cost of a nickel, and got quite a lot of reading done. Plus, the drive was very beautiful, full of rice paddies and palm trees and Indian men herding water buffalo. My back was a little sore after the journey, however, which only covered a distance of about 110 miles.
Benares is widely known as one of the oldest continually inhabited cities on Earth. It is also regarded as one of the holiest cities in all of Hinduism, if not the holiest. It is further reputed to be an incredible place to experience by hippie western travelers, who shortly after leaving grow dreadlocks and talk about how Benares changed their life. Hindus believe that dying in Benares grants automatic salvation, and so it has become famous for its funeral ghats along the river. I tried to go in without expectations, which is impossible. So I imagined a dusty city on the bank of the Ganga, full of cowshit and the dying. I was only half right.
What first surprised me, however, is that Benares is not a dusty city. In fact, it seems to just appear out of the jungle. All of the sudden, we were no longer in a forest and had stumbled upon the outskirts of a city. We got off the bus, stretched, and grabbed a rickshaw to a part of the city known as Godaulia. In Godaulia is the most popular ghat and a cluster of tourist-friendly lodges and restaurants. The closer we came to Godaulia, the older the city seemed to look, the more crowded it grew, and the narrower the streets became. Soon, we reached an area that was off limits to cars, and soon after that, we reached an area only open to foot traffic. Most of the ghats, which are essentially platforms and then steps leading down to the water, are like this, only accessed by terribly confusing alleyways full of shops, cows, and mud. But most of these alleys are older than the United States, and I could help feeling captivated by them. We picked out a hotel called the Yogi Lodge and made our way through the maze of corridors until we saw a sign for it. From there, we climbed a series of steps until, stuck at the end of an alley about three feet wide, there was a bright sign for the lodge. The lodge itself was fantastic, with a clean restaurant, decent rooms, a friendly staff, and best of all, it was cheap. We threw our bags down and headed out to the ghats for a quick look before bed.
The ghats run along the river for a few miles, and late at night, are positively eerie. Not eerie in a haunted way, but eerie in that you can feel how old they are. There were quiet, save for the sound of bells and drums in the distance. We climbed along the stairs for a mile or so, the sound growing louder and a faint golden light grower brighter. Finally we arrived at the source: it was one of the two funeral ghats. A crowd of men were gathered around watching the flames. A man attending the fire (funeral pyres are strictly managed by untouchables) swung a large black branch over his head and let it come crashing down on the flames, assumingly to aid in the decomposition of the body, but I don’t really know why. I saw a skull fly into the air, the first of many body parts that I would see in Benares. Above us was a crematorium, perched atop large pillars above the ghat, giving it the look of a giant, Gothic cement animal with cylindrical legs. Above that was the man’s house who owned the ghats, the “big boss” as the untouchables called him. It was a little too spooky for me, but I stayed for a long while, utterly hypnotized by it all. I finally mustered the will to leave the ghats and return to the lodge with my roommate.
The next morning, we woke early again, having organized a dawn boatride on the Ganga. It was still dark and misty on the river. The water itself still seemed to be waking up. The funeral ghat was already in full swing, though, and washer men furiously beat wet clothes against the steps. The buildings and temples along the riverfront looked so old, packed in tightly against one another that they looked to be suffocating. I had the feeling that I was in Venice after a nuclear, but the way the emerging sun hit the buildings and created a kind of glow refrained me from further categorization, so I just sat and watched. We passed a dead cow that had been shoved off into the water. A dog was atop the floating cow, eating its belly. We also passed a dead bloated baby, as babies are not burned in the funeral pyres but are simply tossed into the river (tossed is probably a poor word choice). I missed it, but was told about it by the boatman and my roommate. I did not search for it afterwards. Yet all of this seemed normal; or if not normal, they were no longer shocking. I felt desensitized and immune to the kind of epiphany that a two-week traveler in India may extrapolate from Benares. I had already seen all of this; the beggars without out arms or legs, the malnourished children, the decaying architecture. True, I had not seen a dead baby, but it was already dead, and therefore just flesh. But the city really was beautiful when seen from the river, and this was something I had not seen in the plains of India.
After the boat ride, I wandered around Benares for the rest of the day, visiting temples, searching for an elusive bookstore that I never could find, wandering the back alleys, and eating in the cosmpolitan collection of restaurants (I was told specifically by everyone I met to not eat local street food, as it could be washed in the Ganga. I still did eat local food street food because it’s delicious, but I also supplemented the pakoras and samosas with delicious worldly cuisine. This included a Japanese place tucked into a back alley called Megu Café. It was run by a Japanese woman who had met her husband while learning the scitar in Benares. They got married and opened this restaurant, which serves the best Japanese food I have had since leaving the Bay Area. These are typical of the kinds of people you meet in Benares, as well). I also visited Sarnath that day, which is the sight of the Buddha’s first sermon. It is in ruins now, but was once a great collection of monuments dedicated to the Buddha, built by Ashoka, the same prick that burned down the first Bodhi tree. I was alos asked by the same kid at different parts of the day whether or not I would like to see his Goldie Hawn store. One of my deepest regrets after going home will surely be not having see the Goldie Hawn store.
More than anything, though, the best way to experience Benares seemed to be to just sit on the ghats and talk to people, be they locals, pilgrims, or tourists. This will be what I remember most about Benares. The sun setting, birds squawking, drums playing, Bhramin families camped out under umbrellas on the ghats, and smiling faces. Everyone whom I met seemed simply ecstatic to be alive, which I attributed to the presence of so much death. But perhaps it was simply the picturesque sunset over ancient buildings, and the awareness of being in one of the holiest cities in the world.
The next day, it rained buckets, and there was not much else I had not seen. I suppose you can’t really see Benares as much as feel it, and without being able to wander about in the city and let things happen to me, I wasn’t too fond of getting all wet. Perhaps another day would have given me that complete spiritual epiphany I was seeking, the one that had come to me in parts at the school in Benares, the Mahabodhi Temple, and the boatride on the Ganga. I will never know. But I had another kind of epiphany as I was holed up in the Mandarin Restro-Bar near the train station, drunk and still three hours from my train: Indian beer is terrible. I was enlightened, because I knew that California has the best selection of microbreweries on the planet. This was true. But, like my other epiphanies, I had no one to share it with, so I simply let the knowledge seep into the back of my head and ordered another Haywards 5000 (I would hate to try the 4999 other drafts).
All in all, I came away from Benares and Bodhgaya relaxed, friendlier, and having more faith in mankind. It was a very light feeling, the kind that I did not feel the need to describe to anyone, nor that I feel I have the ability to describe. But it was there nonetheless, and I felt comfortable that I could enjoy the rest of my experience without pummeling an auto-rickshaw driver.

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