Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda

Dateline: 28 November 2025. The coach ride from Gridhakuta to Venu Van was brief. After all, the two sites were barely three or four kilometres apart. After the crowds and constant activity at Gridhakuta, Venu Van felt so much quieter, almost laid back. Just a gate, a park and the feeling that we were stepping into a place that once belonged to someone else’s idea of rest.

Venu Van means Bamboo Grove and the bamboo still grew thick in places, tall and closely packed. This had once been King Bimbisara’s royal garden, a private retreat that he chose to give away to a wandering teacher and his followers. It became the first vihara ever formally offered to the Sangha. Before monasteries became institutions, there was this simple gift of a grove and a king’s permission to stay.

At the centre of the park was a pond known as the Karanda Tank. Tradition says the Buddha bathed here before walking out to teach on Gridhakuta. Standing by the water, I could picture him rinsing off dust and sweat before heading into the world to speak. We wandered quietly through the grounds and stopped at the Phra Ovadapatimokkha Dhammacetiya where we prepared for some brief meditation and chanting. Beyond this, there were other small shrines and a modern Buddha statue set around the pond. Walking through Venu Van, it became easy to appreciate how a kingly gift turned into a place of residence and how from here the path led uphill to Gridhakuta and, further still, to Nalanda where the Buddha’s teachings would later be organised, expanded and housed in brick and system.

Our group returned to the Rajgir Residency Hotel for lunch and to check out before heading on to Nalanda. I had heard much about the place but like Jetavana, it did not strike me at first that this too was an archaeological park. The result of ill-preparation for this trip. From the entrance, we walked straight into rows of ruined red-brick monasteries, some walls being cleaned by workers. Courtyards opened up, then closed again. Narrow, repetitive cells lined the passageways, clearly meant as living quarters for monks. Monk after monk, cell after cell. This was a place built for people who stayed for the pursuit of knowledge. The brickwork was thick and even in ruin it was obvious how carefully the spaces had been planned to manage air, light, heat and movement. There was nothing casual about Nalanda!

After that, we exited briefly into the open area beyond the monasteries and only then were directed towards what had been identified as the library zone. By then, the idea of Nalanda as a centre of learning had begun to sink in. It wasn’t hard to imagine manuscripts being carried back and forth, debates spilling into courtyards, students memorising, arguing, revising. Thousands of students. Hundreds of teachers.

Only later were we led to the Great Stupa of Shariputra, one of the Buddha’s foremost disciples. It had been built up over time, expanded through the ages. Walking around it, I was struck by how intricate it was. Stairways climbed its sides. Small shrines tucked into corners. Terracotta panels pressed directly into the brickwork. Curious, we walked all the way around.

By then, a question had been quietly bothering me. We keep calling Nalanda a university but historically it was known as a mahāvihāra, or a great monastery. The words aren’t the same, yet both are used. Standing there, it became clear that Nalanda wasn’t a university in the modern sense. There were no degrees, no convocation halls, no institutional branding. But it also wasn’t just a monastery. It was residential, selective, structured, supported by kings and visited by monks and scholars from across the region including the Middle Kingdom and Tibet. It was committed to organised teaching across many disciplines. To call it a mahāvihāra is to use the name it had for those who lived there. To call it a university is a modern attempt to describe its scale and purpose in terms we recognise today.

By the time we left the Great Stupa, the names mahāvihāra and University mattered less. What stayed with me was that Nalanda was built for study, argument and growth, for thought carried on over lifetimes. Not a sacred site meant to overwhelm but a working place meant to endure. The ruins did not try to impress me. Instead, they suggested that learning taken seriously enough can shape an entire city and hold it together for centuries.

Finally, we left Nalanda at about 2pm and set off for Bodhgaya, the next important stop along the Buddhist trail. It wasn’t too far away, and we expected to reach the Imperial Bodhgaya Hotel within three hours. Along the way, however, we made an unscheduled stop after spotting a huge Buddha statue rising in the distance. This turned out to be Wat Navamindra Dharmmikaraj. The 108-foot statue, though still under construction, already looked close to completion. The temple itself was closed to visitors for the day, but the chief monk welcomed us warmly and personally showed us around the grounds. His hospitality was deeply appreciated. He told us that once completed, the statue would be a new landmark being the tallest Buddha image in Bihar. Depicting the earth-touching mudra, it was being built on a site of roughly two acres.

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Nepal-India Day 9: Bodhgaya  

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Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakura
Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali
Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar
Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti 
Nepal-India Day 5: Lumbini to Shravasti

Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: The sala tree 
Nepal-India Days 3 and 4: Lumbini and Kapilvastu 

Nepal-India Days 1 and 2: Kathmandu and Nagarkot