Beneath the Bodhi Tree

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Mike – We decided to break up the long train ride from NJP (the train station servicing Darjeeling) and Varanasi by stopping over in Bodhgaya. For anyone not familiar with this place, it is famous for having been the place where the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi Tree, preceded and followed by weeks of different meditative practices (and somewhat unbelievable endeavours) which culminated in the creation of the philosophy and religion of Buddhism.

The modern-day Bodhgaya consists of a network of large Buddhist monasteries surrounding the most famous Mohabodhi temple, which houses a descendent of the original Bodhi tree. Each major Buddhist country has built a monastery there to house the faithful of its particular branch of Buddhism. There were too many to visit in the 1.5 days we were there, but we definitely got an idea of how the decor and dress can change from sect to sect. I can’t imagine what it would be like if all the major branches of Christianity congregated in one place. Maybe, they do. I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s anywhere I’d safely want to travel.

The monasteries were each so intricately maintained. The decor was very colourful, and each country’s monastery had a different twist to it. For example, the Bhutanese monastery had a sort-of 3-D layout around it’s walls, as you can see from the picture on the right. The lawns and gardens surrounding the grounds were elaborately maintained, and very well manicured. We were lucky to go at a time of the year when pilgrims from all over the region gather to pay their respect and meditate. Although this made it tough to find lodging, I can’t imagine a better time to go.

The Mahabodhi temple was truly something else. Monks in different colours surrounded the Bodhi Tree and performed, day-and-night, this sort of half push-up, half bridge (core exercise), as a full-range of motion, to pay their respect to the all-mighty Buddha. They do this on a long wooden board with cloth on their hands so as not to get blisters or slivers. There were over a hundred people doing this at any point in time. Beyond that, there were countless amounts of people meditating, and paying their respect in their own way. A fellow from the nearest college showed us around that day, as he wanted an opportunity to practice his English, and he mentioned that some monks will do upwards of two thousand of these exercises a day, which is fricken nuts.

We stayed at the Tibetan Karma Temple, as it was cheap, and close to all the major attractions. We didn’t mind abiding to their curfew as there was only one place in the entire town that served alcohol. Salt Lake City, India.

Besides the torrent of touts that we had to fight through to get from Point A to Point B, it was a great experience to see ground-zero of one of the world’s most interesting faiths.

Teg- Bodh Gaya was well worth the visit but I don’t think I could have handled staying there much longer than we did. Any longer, and I think either one of us might of gone crazy by the amount of haggling that we seemed to encounter everywhere. As beautiful and peaceful as the Mahabodhi temple was, it really felt like the rest of the town survived solely off the foreign attraction the temple brought. Maybe we had become soft from our time in Darjeeling who knows, but it felt like we were no-stop bombarded by hagglers as we wandered the streets. As we entered the gates of different Monasteries we enjoyed moments of peace and quiet, but as soon as we stepped outside the gate again we would immediately be surrounded by people.

The Mahabodhi temple was easily the best temple I’ve been to in India to date. We went both at sunset and dawn and it was great to experience it in different lights. Sunset was beautiful because the huge enclosure surrounding the temple was covered with lights. And though it was still extremely busy with people, it remained relatively quiet. It's funny actually, the only sound we could here was the birds in the trees, but this was no peaceful chirp. It sounded more like a war of over 100 birds in each tree. It was crazy loud whenever we passed under the trees...except the bodhi tree, of course.

For how spiritual the town supposedly is, I was pretty creeped out with the amount of eyes following me (though this is the day to day everywhere else in India). I found it rather rude and disrespectful at the time, but looking back on it now, it was actually pretty funny (refer to the photo on the left).