Destination: India – Bihar – Bodh Gaya – lights please!
“Our” conductor wakes us up just before we arrive in Gaya. From Gaya, we take a shared rickshaw (10 people) to Bodh Gaya, the town where The Buddha achieved enlightenment. Having said, I have to add that there are a lot of Buddhist people trying to achieve enlightenment here. Maybe that explains the constant power shortages… Sorry, just trying to understand such a complex society.
Anyway, Bodh Gaya is a buzzing international Buddhist destination, a pretty cool place with, most importantly, very good food. There is the lovely main temple (Mahabodi) where the tree under which Buddha meditated still is and you can even pick a leaf from the ground (of course I did it). The tree is considered sacred and a world heritage site by UNESCO. Also, most Buddhist countries have their own temple here, so there are a lot of temples with different architectures to be explored around the town. We also find a fabulous Thai restaurant and make a pilgrimage there every evening, blessed are the spring rolls!
We only stay for 4 days here as it was hard to get the train tickets out of here and though I know it’s not enough, I try to pack in a quick Vipasana meditation training session. Yeah, we all know this hyper being needs to chill. I talk to a monk from a training centre and ask him if the basic training session can be done in one day. He said yes, ok, of course, if I can give him a donation of 1000 rupees!!! Later on we find you can do it for as little as 100 rupees for a whole day. Ok, I know I’m cynical about religion in general but all the “sacred sightseeing” donations are not helping the cause of religion in general.
Since we arrived, we’d seen big groups of people walking around with eye patches, just having had eye surgery. We find out where the hospital is and go for a visit. We met a local guy who triages the patients and he introduces us to a French lady who explains to us that the work is done by a NGO based at the local ashram. After visiting the hospital we go to the ashram, where we had the privilege of meeting the last living student of Mahatma Gandhi. He’s a lovely, vibrant old man who explains to us that the eye camp operates in Bodh Gaya twice a year, for a month. They operate on between one thousand and two thousand people per day (cataracts, glaucoma, trachoma…). So, we make our donation, give our Namaste and go back to the hotel feeling better than after any meditation session.
After a few days, it’s time to leave Bodh Gaya. When we get to our “deluxe” bus to take us to Patna we both have a fit. It’s an old awful abandoned “school” bus falling to pieces. We should have guessed, 100 rupees for a 4 hours ride… So, we decided to take a taxi to Patna to the train station to take the overnight train to Siliguri, on our way to Darjeeling, our final stop in India. The train is four hours late and we hang out with a Swedish couple we met at the train station. The train ride is again a nightmare, we only got 3AC and there are 12 people sleeping in a cabin of 8. Everyone is snoring and coughing and some of the guys sharing a berth get up at 5.30 AM, of course, turning all the lights on and waking everyone up, the bloody bastards.
