Bodhgaya

A giant statue of Buddha
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I took a bus from Nainital to Haldiwar and a train from Haldiwar to Lucknow.  I arrived at Lucknow early in the morning and spent the day there waiting for the train in the evening to Gaya.  When I arrived in Gaya in the morning I shared a taxi to Bodhgaya with a couple of other backpackers.

You have to fill in a form for each ticket to make a train reservation in India, and it's important to fill it in carefully.  I knew I needed the train to Lucknow, leaving from the place an hour away by bus from Nainital, whose name begins with H.  I guessed the spelling on the form, and when I looked at my tickets I'd been given a ticket for the train to Lucknow leaving from a town on the other side of Uttaranchal.

I would have to swing from the roof into the coach, breaking through one of its windows, like the woman in that Skoda ad

Mahabodhi Temple
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'Oh Haldiwar', said the guy behind the counter.  No problem - just a Rs 40 cancelation fee.

'Cancelation fee?!  But I only just booked it!'

I had to pay the fee.  When I looked again at my corrected tickets, I now had a ticket from Haldiwar to Lucknow leaving at 22.12 the following night - the 29th - and a ticket from Lucknow to Gaya leaving at 18.45 on... the 29th.

'Sorry - how am I supposed to get my train to Gaya if it leaves before I've even left Haldiwar?'

The Thai monastery
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'Oh - you want to go to Gaya on the 30th?'

'Well, if the train to Lucknow is overnight, then yes, obviously.'

'But you wrote the 29th on both forms.'

'Yes - that's because I'm leaving on the 29th.  Why would I want a ticket for a train that I can't possibly catch?!'

Girls washing pots on a village street
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No problem - just a Rs 30 change of date fee....  My protestations were futile.  I found out later that I had experienced 'customer service' typical of the Indian railway reservation system:  designed to serve as much money as possible to the Indian railway.

When my train to Lucknow arrived at Haldiwar station it pulled up beside the train that was already at the only platform.  I clambered through the closest train in pursuit of a young Indian man who had offered his assistance, and jumped down onto the tracks on the opposite side.  My seat was in coach S8 but we had no idea which end of the train that was.  We picked a direction and started running along the tracks, only to be told when we reached one end of the train that coach S8 was at the opposite.  I started running in the other direction along the train, which was a good fifteen carriages long.  I had reached about the middle when the train began to pull away.  I made a leap for the nearest door, which was closed, and climbed up the steps until I could see through its small window.

The door was locked - it wouldn't open - and as the train began to pick up speed I started to pound on the metal in the hope that someone would open the door and let me in.  To my horror I could see that people inside the train had heard me trying to get in, had looked at me through the window in acknowledgement, and had chosen to ignore me!

I began to look forward to spending the next eight hours in the dark, clinging to the outside of a speeding train.  It was either that, or I would have to swing from the roof into the coach, breaking through one of its windows, like the woman in that Skoda advert.  My execution of the stunt would be all the more impressive for the sixty-five litre pack on my back, and the iron railings across the train windows.

Fortunately, somebody soon answered the racket I was making and opened the door to let me in.

During my brief stopover in Lucknow I visited a few places of interest, including the Bara Imambara - a massive Muslim tomb built in the eighteenth century as a famine relief project - where I experienced the worst case of Mickey-Mouse-guy syndrome (see paragraph 3 here) that I have suffered yet, at the mercy of twenty or more sixteen-year-old male students.

On my way out of the Bara Imambara I was obliged to pay a few rupees to the old man keeping a lazy eye on the visitors' shoes.  I suppose it's better than him just begging for money, but this arrangement has always smacked of protection racketeering to me.

Bodhgaya, the proudly self-professed 'land of enlightenment', is the town where Prince Siddhartha, while sitting under a banyan tree, finally attained supreme enlightenment and became Lord Buddha.  The fourth generation of the very same tree stands on its predecessors' spot next to the Mahabodhi temple.

Bodhgaya is a holy, spiritual place, occupied by Buddhist pilgrims and ecclesiastical representation from every country in the world with a significant Buddhist population.  Each of these countries has at least one temple or monastery in Bodhgaya, built in the style of each country's respective traditional architecture.

The spiritual importance of Bodhgaya, where the Dalai Lama resides for December and January, is reflected in the evidence of piety visible especially at the Mahabodhi temple.  Groups of monks sit at the Bodhi tree, chanting Tibetan mantras and beating goatskin drums; many Buddhist pilgrims can be seen around the Mahabodhi compound, all day facing the temple, standing, bowing, and then lying themselves prone, with the intention of completing some number of thousands of repetitions of this gesture of devotion to the Buddha.

The population though in Bodhgaya is largely Hindu, and largely pretty impoverished, like the rest of Bihar.  I was fortunate enough to get a room in the hotel in the village, removed from the tourist areas.  It was a pleasure walking through the village each morning, amidst the chickens, geese, pigs, goats and cows, returning the children's greetings and watching the families getting on with their apparently simple lives.  Despite their want, the people in the village still seem to be happy, and proud; it wasn't until I arrived, after a short walk, in the tourist areas of Bodhgaya that I met with the begging that I am by now so familiar with.

I was pleased to find in practice, in Sujuta village, across the river from Bodhgaya, a solution to the root cause of some of India's biggest problems:  three separate branches of a school that houses and educates orphan children who would otherwise be living as beggars on the streets.  The school is made possible by sponsorship, I think mainly from wealthier Buddhist countries.

I shared a rickshaw to Gaya and then caught the afternoon train to Mughalsarai.  From there it was about an hour's taxi ride into Varanasi.