Dateline: 29 and 30 November 2025. We thought we were on fairly safe ground with the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple in Bodhgaya. Everything there was neat, labelled and contained within the same sacred compound. Then someone casually mentioned that there was another pool of water in town that might lay claim to being the real Muchalinda pond. Naturally, we had to see it for ourselves.
Our tour guide arranged for the coach to take us about one and a half kilometres away from the Mahabodhi temple. When we arrived, one of the first things we saw was familiar: a statue of the Buddha seated beneath the open hood of a serpent, very similar to the one at the temple. But here the statue stood on dry land. No pond surrounding it. We walked further in and soon came upon a sizeable pond, with steps leading down to the water. It was not small, not insignificant. And just to make things more intriguing, the road running along the northern edge was called Muchalinda Lake Road.
We were told that some Buddhists had been promoting the idea that this could be the actual Muchalinda pond. Whether out of conviction, tradition or something else, I cannot say. But from what we gathered, the suggestion had not gained wide acceptance or else there'd be hordes of people around. As it turned out, only our group that afternoon.Still, standing there, the question lingered. The two ponds are about 1.5 kilometres apart. All the other six sites associated with the seven weeks after Enlightenment lie within the immediate vicinity of the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple. Would this pond be the exception? Would the Buddha have walked this far out during that period, only to return again? It seemed unlikely, but who can speak with certainty after 25 centuries? In the end, I can only record what we saw and what we were told. The rest, I leave to the historians.
By then Siddhartha had spent six years in severe ascetic practice, starving himself in the nearby caves, pushing his body to its limits, believing that self-mortification would lead to liberation. But it did not. Rather, weakness would cloud the mind. When Sujata offered him that bowl of kheer, it was out of compassion, a simple act of human kindness. He accepted it, and that acceptance marked the beginning of the Middle Path between indulgence and extreme denial.
Despite the stupa's relative vicinity to the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple, there were no massive crowds, no queues, no security layers. Only a few visitors moving quietly around the mound. We lingered there for a mere 15 minutes before deciding to move on.
We also visited the Surya Bharti School, a small village school around Bodhgaya. It was not an incidental stop but a deliberate one, planned with the tour agency before we had left on our travels. We knew that there were many village children who were in need and among ourselves, we had collected some funds and brought with us a suitcase of provisions from home. We had hoped that these items, which we take so completely for granted, would be of much more value to them.
The school lies about three kilometres from the centre of Bodhgaya town. Most of the children come from nearby villages, and some walk kilometres each way to attend classes. Their parents are seasonal farm labourers, migrant workers in distant cities, rickshaw pullers, factory hands, construction workers....families whose incomes fluctuate with the amount of daily work. After school, many of the children help in the fields, tend animals or assist their mothers at home. Some study at night by the light of a kerosene lamp.
We understood from the tour guide that Bihar remains one of the poorest states in India, long associated with low literacy rates, although development efforts in recent years have begun to change the landscape. Surya Bharti School exists precisely for this reason, which is to give under-privileged children a chance at education that would otherwise be beyond reach.
When we presented our modest donations, there was no grand ceremony, just a warm welcome from the few hundred pupils there of varying ages. But they put on a small programme for us: traditional dances performed with surprising confidence, and a martial arts display that combined discipline with youthful exuberance. Their energy was infectious. Whatever hardship framed their daily lives, it had not dimmed their sense of possibility.
Finally, I must say the two nights we spent at the Imperial Bodhgaya Hotel gave us something we hadn’t had since landing in India: time to breathe. Proper free time in the evenings, with nowhere we had to be and no temple gate closing on us.
On the first night we headed into downtown Bodhgaya for a bit of shopping. The coach dropped us some distance away and we transferred to the local electric three-wheelers. That was our first proper taste of Indian traffic at close quarters. Harrowing doesn’t quite cover it. These little machines darted in and out of traffic as if guided by instinct rather than road rules. For the uninitiated, it was enough to trigger palpitations. Somehow, everyone survived.
Many of our group went back again the following night for more retail therapy, but we decided to see what the hotel itself had to offer. We wandered down to the lobby and walked straight into a wedding party that was just getting started. Bright saris, flashing jewellery, music thumping through the hall....it was a riot of colour and sound. Guests were arriving in waves, greetings loud and exuberant, as if the entire extended clan had turned up.
We stood there for a while, content to be spectators. And as if one celebration wasn’t enough, another wedding procession was inching its way up the main road outside with drums beating, lights blazing, people dancing in the street without the slightest concern for traffic. Apparently November is considered an auspicious month for marriages. From what we saw, half of Bodhgaya seemed to have taken that seriously.
After days of walking in the footsteps of the Buddha, it was oddly grounding to witness something so completely ordinary and human. These families were celebrating, music blaring, life going on noisily in the present. Enlightenment and electricity generators, ancient vows and modern music, India doesn’t separate the sacred from the everyday. It simply lets them jostle side by side.
Now that all our objectives in Bodhgaya had been fulfilled, it was time to leave for Varanasi, which was some 270 kilometres away. By the time we checked into the Rivatas by Ideal, it was close to nine in the evening. We had spent nearly nine hours on the coach.
The journey itself was long and rather monotonous, broken only by an unexpected but most welcome stop at Wat Thai Sasaram in Auwan at about 4pm. It was meant to be a simple halt to stretch our legs and make use of their impeccably clean restrooms. Instead, we were warmly received by the temple volunteers, who ushered us towards tables laid out with food and drinks. They must be accustomed to weary travellers passing through.
There was authentic Thai noodle soup, freshly brewed coffee and chilled soft drinks from their refrigerators. For a brief while, the fatigue of the road fell away. In that building with its gentle hospitality and unhurried atmosphere, it felt as though we had stepped out of India and into Thailand itself. It was, in every sense, a different feeling.
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Nepal-India Day 11: Varanasi
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