We caught a shared rickshaw (30 Rs.) from Gaya (The train station we arrived at) to some road about 3km from Bodhgaya (The town we were aiming for). From here we jumped on a horse and cart and entered the historical Buddhist town the old fashioned way. Buddhist pilgrims from around the world visit Bodhgaya to pay their respects to the Mahabodhi Temple. It was here where Prince Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and became the Buddha (after this he must have put his feet up, because he used to be quite a thin looking guy, I’ve always depicted the Buddha as that fat, cheerful, cross legged garden ornament). There were many Buddhists praying at the temple whilst we were there. I pointed out to Maj that they all had pretty decent builds on them, not a second later did we witness their praying style…..If you know what a burpese is (workout movement) then its not far from that. We found out from a Cambodian Buddhist later, that some people do this movement up to 2000 times, in one prayer session! (This particular guy was stuffing his face with chocolate ice cream so I don’t reckon he did that many). What also makes this town so special is that Buddhist communities from around the world construct their own countries style of temple or monastery in the surrounding area. Our favorite was probably the Thai monastery (we took pictures of a few so you can judge for yourself). Another great structure in Bodhgaya is the 25m tall statue of Buddha and his disciples. Supposedly, part of it is hollow, and contains up to 20,000 small statues and figurines of the Buddha. We asked one young gentleman to take a photo of both of us stood in front of the statue, at first he seemed shy, but after asking again he took stance, crossed his arms and put on a huge cheesy smile. He seemed disappointed when Maj explained, a photo of us, not you gandu. On our walk towards the statue we bullied some local kids into letting us play with their badminton equipment. Majid’s first serve and the end of the racket flew off! A great Majid moment. (The kids weren’t too pleased though).
The day after we managed to hire some bicycles and made our way towards the Dungeshwari cave temples, which are 10-12km away from Bodhgaya. The journey there proved far more difficult than we first expected. Not only did we have to push the bikes across a baron wasteland where a river had dried up, but we had to push them through part of the river aswell! After this obstacle we had to cycle around 3km through lots of small villages, it was a beautiful surrounding and gave us a good insight on the lives of people who live in rural India. The caves themselves turned out to be a dissapointment, but it was worth the journey in my opinion (I think Maj felt otherwise). On our return journey a young kid wanted me to give him a lift on the back of the bike to his village (only about 1km away) when I dropped him off I pretended to demand 10 Rupees from him, his expression was priceless.
Before leaving Bodhgaya, we were lucky enough to see a local sports day in progress. The girls 200m we think? All dressed in their sari's still, and running bare foot (Usain Bolt eat your heart out).
Bodhgaya Photo Link:
http://www3.snapfish.in/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1779078011/a=2264773011_2264773011/
No comments:
Post a Comment