Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya

Dateline: 29 and 30 November 2025. When one thinks of Bodhgaya, one thinks of the place where the Buddha attained Enlightenment.  There isn't any need to explain further. Our group had two mornings here and both were spent at the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple in the heart of the town and the reason Bodhgaya exists at all. The town itself isn’t large but it feels permanently clogged. Every road leads to the temple and every road is packed. Monks in maroon, saffron, grey and brown from all directions. Lay pilgrims from everywhere. Street vendors pushing tourism trinkets everywhere. It never really stops. 

The first morning felt urgent, almost impatient. Everyone was trying to get to the same place, the same point in space and time. Getting into the temple compound was a small challenge. Security was tight and layered. Scanners, pat-downs, queues that crept forward by inches. Phones were strictly banned. Cameras, strangely enough, were allowed for a fee and the two of us with cameras complied. We happily paid and walked in feeling chuffed, as if we had crossed some small but deliberate line and emerged victorious.

Once past the first checkpoint, the street noise fell away quickly. The air thickened with expectation. Shoes were off next, then onto the stone walkway. On either side were rows of small votive stupas, some ancient, some freshly placed, but all carrying the same intention. Ahead of us rose the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple itself and it was impressive because of its height. It doesn’t spread out, it climbs upwards. A narrow pyramid of brickwork rising almost straight up, tier after tier packed with niches, carvings, Buddha figures and those repeating patterns. Right at the top, the golden finial caught the light and drew the eye upward. I could understand why people travelled for weeks just to stand here and look up.

Our journey through the grounds began not with the tree but with the temple’s interior. At the centre was a bright chamber glowing from above. A golden Buddha statue sat there, calm and serene, draped in a heavy brown robe and a yellow shoulder cloth. Behind the head was a white halo blazed against the wall. Above, a massive golden umbrella hung low like a crown. We murmured our prayers. We managed to pass a set of robes to the attendant monk. Almost immediately we were ushered along. No lingering allowed. Too many people behind us.

Back outside, we followed the stone path around to the rear of the temple. Movement here was strictly one way. No arguments. A tall, ornate golden fence separated us from the most sensitive ground of all, the place of the Enlightenment itself. The fence kept people moving and more importantly kept the roots of the Bodhi Tree safe. This was not the original tree under which the Buddha sat. That one was cut down long ago. So this was a living descendant, grown from the same line, carrying the memory forward.

At the first section of the railing, things were busy. This was where flowers were offered. A priest stood inside the enclosure, hands never stopping, taking garlands and baskets from pilgrims and scattering them at the base of the tree. Petals piled up in soft layers, fresh colour feeding ancient roots. It was repetitive and oddly calming to watch.

Further along, the mood shifted. People leaned quietly against the bars, heads bowed, lips moving. From here we could see into the protected space beneath the Bodhi Tree. There stood the Vajrasana, the Diamond Throne. Not a seat as such but a raised platform, fully covered, sheltered by an ornate canopy and wrapped in gold. This was the exact spot where Siddhartha Gautama sat through the night that changed everything. No one could get close but no one needed to. Just seeing it was enough.

At the far end was the chanting area. This was where groups like ours gathered. In front stood a long golden table covered with offerings, pink lotuses, fruit, stacks of texts. Space was tight. We sat close together behind as our monks began chanting. The crowd flowed past behind us, a constant stream. Some paused for a while to listen and then moved on. It felt public and private at the same time.

Just around the corner was the Cloister Walk, the path where the Buddha is said to have walked in meditation during the second week after his Enlightenment. Stone lotuses marked the raised platform, blooming permanently where legend says his feet once touched the ground. As we stood there, we realised this wasn't just a historical site but a living, breathing landscape where the "awakening" of 2,500 years ago felt like a present moment.

With the main objectives accomplished on the first day, the second morning was slower, more relaxed and reflective. We stayed close to the Bodhi Tree and traced the seven weeks that followed the Enlightenment. The story began exactly where we stood at the golden railing. For the first week, the Buddha remained seated on the Vajrasana, absorbed in the bliss of liberation. Then he moved north-east of the tree and stood there for an entire week, eyes unblinking, gazing at the Bodhi Tree in gratitude. A small stupa with a standing Buddha now marks that spot.

In the third week, he practiced walking meditation, pacing back and forth along what we now call the Cloister Walk. Eighteen lotuses are said to have bloomed beneath his feet and today they are carved into stone. In the fourth week, he meditated in a small shrine known as the Ratnaghar. Tradition says his body radiated six colours of light there, colours that would later form the Buddhist flag.

The fifth week was spent under a banyan tree, where he spoke to a Brahmin and made it clear that holiness came from conduct, not birth. A pillar near the temple entrance marks that place now. In the sixth week, he sat by a pond. A storm broke and the serpent king Muchalinda rose from the water, coiling around the Buddha and spreading his hood above him as shelter. The pond is still there, with a large statue of the Buddha protected by the cobra at its centre. There is, however, a small puzzle hanging over this pond, one I’ll come back to in the next story. 

The seventh week was spent under the Rajayatna tree. At the end of it, two merchants, Tapussa and Bhallika, offered him rice cake and honey. They became his first lay disciples, an occasion marking the beginning of the spread of the Buddha's teachings to the world.

Walking these sites one by one, it became clear that the Mahabodhi Temple is not just a monument frozen in time. It is a living city of faith. Monks from every tradition camped on the grounds. Lay pilgrims slept, prayed, waited. This has gone on for centuries. For those resting there, this was the Vajrasana, the Diamond Throne, the centre of the universe. Faces in the crowd changed as people came and went, but the energy did not. People believed that even one night in the city of the Buddha's Enlightenment meant something. With that, we had completed the third of our four essential stops. Only one more to go.

Next:

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya to Varanasi  

Previous: 
Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

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

Queen of chess

I believe we all remember what happened in October 2020 when Netflix aired The Queen’s Gambit. A fictional girl from Kentucky did more for chess than a century of tournament bulletins. During lockdown, people who couldn’t even spell “Sicilian” were suddenly playing blitz at 2am. Online platforms exploded, chess sets vanished from shelves and for once, young girls saw someone who looked like them sitting at the board and winning. That, of course, was fiction based on a novel with the same title.

Now Netflix turns to the real thing. Queen of Chess is a 94-minute documentary on Judit Polgár. Born in communist Hungary, Judit was part of her father László’s grand theory that geniuses are made, not born. The Polgár sisters were home-schooled and they studied chess every day. So there was no ordinary childhood in the conventional sense. László laid down the discipline, structure and endless calculations for Judit and her two elder sisters, Zsuzsa and Sofia. To him, they were his experiment first and daughters second.

By 12 she was already the top-rated female player in the world. At 15 she became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time, breaking Bobby Fischer’s record. Later she broke into the world top ten. To this day she remains the only woman to have done so. She refused to play in women-only events. She wanted to test herself against the very best, and she did.

The red thread running through the film is Garry Kasparov. In fact, at times the documentary felt almost as much about him as about Judit, with the former world champion cast, fairly or not, as the antagonist in her ascent. Their first clash in Linares 1994 was revisited, including the infamous touch-move incident that caused such debate. To this day Kasparov does not quite concede that he was wholly wrong, although he has admitted that he might have let go of the knight for one-tenth of a second. For years she chased him. In 2002 she finally beat him. The handshake was not warm, and Kasparov quickly exited through a side door. The point, however, was decisive.

The documentary blends archival footage from Olympiads, Linares, Hungarian Championships with present-day interviews. Judit comes across without arrogance but there is resolve in her voice. She speaks about having to prove herself “ten times more” than if she had been born a boy. That line alone sums up half the battle.

Some early reviews praised the film for giving her a recognition that was long overdue. Others felt it did not dig deeply enough into the emotional cost of being raised as part of an experiment. There is a telling moment when she is asked how it felt. A pause, a slight drift of the eyes, but no dramatic outburst. 

Will Queen of Chess trigger another global boom like The Queen’s Gambit? I doubt it. Fiction is easier to romanticise, and that series arrived at the perfect moment during a pandemic when the world was stuck at home. Today, the chess audience is far larger than it was five years ago. Many newcomers know the fictional Beth Harmon. Far fewer know Judit Polgár, and she was the one that really changed chess history long before Netflix took notice of the game. If this film does nothing else, it should remind people where the real story began.

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

Harbin Medical University visit

Every few years, Penang seems to rediscover Dr Wu Lien Teh. Not because we forgot him, but because something happens out there in the world that suddenly makes what he did a century ago feel very current again. With Harbin Medical University celebrating its 100th anniversary soon, that old Penang connection has come back into view, and this time it came in the form of students and lecturers travelling all the way from northern China just to stand in front of a statue on our island.

Wu Lien Teh was born in Penang, studied in Cambridge and then went where he was most needed. In 1910, when a deadly pneumonic plague broke out in north-east China, killing people by the tens of thousands, he was sent to Harbin with almost nothing but a clear head. People didn’t understand how the disease spread, didn’t believe in masks or quarantine and certainly didn’t want to hear about cremation. Wu studied the outbreak, figured out it spread through the air and insisted people protect themselves. He designed a simple thick gauze mask that anyone could make. That plain-looking mask would later be recognised as the forerunner of today’s surgical masks and respirators.

When the deaths continued, Wu made a decision that went strongly against custom. He ordered the cremation of bodies to stop the disease from spreading further. It was controversial, but it worked. By early 1911, the plague was brought under control and deaths had stopped. That episode alone would have secured his place in history, but Wu didn’t leave after the crisis passed. He stayed on, built public health systems and trained doctors. In 1926 he founded what would later become Harbin Medical University.

War eventually forced him back to Penang, where he lived out his later years quietly, practising medicine while his reputation grew overseas. He passed away in 1960, long before the world rediscovered masks during Covid-19. But when the pandemic came, many people were surprised to learn that the idea of mass mask-wearing had a Penang-born doctor at its roots.

This week, students from Harbin Medical University visited Penang as part of their centennary build-up. They laid flowers at Wu’s statue outside the Penang Institute, met the Dr Wu Lien-Teh Society and tried to understand the place that molded the man who shaped their university. For them, Penang was not just another stop, but the starting point of their institution’s story.

State exco Wong Hon Wai spoke about how Penang and Harbin are tied together by Wu’s life and work. He reminded the audience that Penang has long recognised Wu’s contribution, through the Dr Wu Lien Teh Society, through roads and housing areas named after him and through the statue presented by Harbin Medical University years ago. Last year, when Dr Zhong Nanshan came to Penang to receive the Wu Lien Teh award for leadership in public health, it felt less like an honour being handed out and more like a torch being passed on.

What surprised some was how few people still know Wu’s story. China’s deputy consul-general in Penang admitted she only found out he was Malaysian after working here. Her hope was that his life could be told in more accessible ways, through short videos, documentaries or films, so that more people understand why he matters.

As Penang builds more direct air links with cities in China, these old connections become easier to renew. Harbin Medical University will mark its 100th anniversary later this year, but the story it is celebrating began much earlier, on this island. And every time students return to Penang to look for Wu Lien Teh, we are reminded that some Penangites never really leave, even when history carries them far away.

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Gridhakuta

Dateline: 28 November 2025. Visiting Rajgir can only mean two things. One was to visit the ruins of the old Nalanda University and the other, a more significant reason for us to be in Rajgir, was to climb Gridhakuta, otherwise known as Vulture's Peak.

Getting up to Gridhakuta took less effort than I had expected. Just a leisurely 25-minute climb on a broad stone-and-brick walkway that wound steadily up the hillside. It was not a narrow trail but a proper path, wide and deliberate, its surface worn smooth by centuries of feet. Much of it followed the ancient route commissioned by King Bimbisara more than 2,500 years ago so he could walk up to meet the Buddha. Long, shallow stretches alternated with short runs of stone steps, never steep enough to intimidate, but persistent enough to remind me that this was a place to approach on foot at human speed.

Beggars sat along the edges of the walkway, some silent, some softly calling out, hands extended. Small traders laid out postcards, prayer beads, plastic bottles of water, trinkets that promise memory or merit depending on who was buying. Coloured tarpaulins strung up here and there, looking messy and improvised. I found myself a little uncomfortable for unknown reason, constantly negotiating where to look, when to move on, while careful not to trip on any uneven steps. This was not a sanitised pilgrimage route. Poverty and devotion shared the same walkway.

As the path curved higher, the noise thinned out and the beggars and traders became fewer. Wind moved more freely, chilling everyone. This was not a place designed for comfort. The sun was unfiltered despite the hazy morning, the ground uneven, the sky wide and exposed. Why did the Buddha chose to teach here season after season, I wondered, when both he and his disciples were exposed to the elements? Except for the caves that we came across, there was nowhere else to hide on this surface, physically or otherwise.

So much is said to have happened on this bare hill. Gridhakuta is associated with some of the most important Buddhist teachings. Buddha had set in motion a second turning of the Wheel of Dhamma, and great Mahayana texts such as the Lotus Sutra and the Perfection of Wisdom teachings were expounded. All these amidst stone, wind and distance.

It was also here that King Bimbisara, ruler of Magadha, was said to have come under the Buddha’s influence, power momentarily bowing before one who had been enlightened. Yet the hill also carried a darker memory of Devadatta’s attempt on the Buddha’s life, aided by Prince Ajatasattu.

Walking back down, we again passed through the beggars and small traders. This time, I didn’t feel the previous discomfort. After standing on Gridhakuta, their presence now made a kind of sense to me. They weren’t out of place after all. A back-to-reality moment, they actually counter-balanced my emotions at the peak. Gridhakuta wasn’t about a list of sermons or grand ideas, but the feeling that this was Buddhism in its raw, original form. Still unsanitised, no roofs, no quiet halls, no protection from weather or human weakness. Gridhakuta didn’t feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a place where early Buddhists had to earn their lessons.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 8: Rajgir Nalanda  

Previous: 
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

Full moon before CNY

I woke up at five. Needed the washroom, but what pulled me out of bed was the light. It was coming in at a different angle, not the usual street lamp glow. This light was cooler, cleaner. I looked out the window and there it was, a brilliant moon hanging low in the sky. The full moon. The last full moon before Chinese New Year.

I went downstairs with the camera, wanting to see it properly from outside the house. No clouds, no haze. Just a clean, round moon, and the moonlight making the night brighter than usual. According to the almanac, the exact moment of full moon, when it would be perfectly round and 100 percent illuminated, was at 6.09 am. I was already wide awake by then, so I waited it out.

This is the result at that exact moment. A photograph of the full moon on the 15th day of the Chinese 12th lunar month. In two days it will be Li Chun, or Jip Chun to us Penang Hokkien folk; and in 14 days time, it shall be Chinese New Year. 

Mark Lindsay's Arizona

Arizona arrived in 1970 at a moment when Mark Lindsay badly needed to be taken seriously on his own terms. For most listeners, he was still inseparable from Paul Revere & The Raiders, the rousing singles, the tricorn hats, the television-friendly swagger. This album was his attempt to step out of that frame, to be heard not as a frontman in costume but as a singer with range, ambition and a sense of where pop music was heading as the 1960s gave way to something more reflective.

From the opening bars, it was clear that Arizona was not a Raiders record in disguise. Produced by Jerry Fuller, the sound was polished, expansive and unapologetically lush. Strings and brass were everywhere, sometimes swelling, sometimes gliding, always framing Lindsay’s voice as the main event. It was sunshine pop moving toward adult contemporary, music designed less for teen dance floors than for car radios and late-night listening.

Lindsay himself seemed acutely aware of what he was trying to do. In his cover notes, he talked about wanting to grow, about songs that reflected a changing America and a more personal set of concerns. There was a sense of a man consciously shedding an old skin. Vocally, he rose to the occasion. This might well be his peak as a singer: confident, flexible, capable of grit when needed and smooth when the arrangement called for it.

The title track remains the album’s centre of gravity. Arizona is bright, catchy and faintly psychedelic, with a chorus that lodges itself in the mind almost immediately. However, the lyric carried the seeds of its own unease. The narrator’s urge to rescue a free-spirited girl and bring her back to “reality” sounded very much of its time but it captured that late-60s moment when idealism was colliding with disillusion.

Elsewhere, Man from Houston allowed Lindsay to lean into a tougher, more soulful persona, while Silver Bird soared on its own sense of drama, carried by his voice and the album’s cinematic production. What stood out was not any single experiment, but the consistency. This is not a one-hit album padded with filler. It had a mood and it sustained it.

If there was a drawback, it was in the very qualities that defined it. Listeners who loved the raw snap of Kicks or Hungry may find Arizona too smooth. At times it flirted with the middle of the road. But taken on its own terms, it succeeded.

More than anything, Arizona documented a transition. It captured Mark Lindsay at the point where pop spectacle gives way to adult self-definition. He did not entirely escape his past, but for one album at least, he proved that the voice at the centre of all that Raider noise could stand unadorned on its own.

Addendum: I also own this compact disc which combined two of Mark Lindsay's albums, Arizona and the follow-up Silverbird. Building directly on the momentum of Arizona, Silverbird arrived later the same year as a natural companion piece. If Arizona captured Lindsay stepping out of costume, Silverbird was the sound of him settling comfortably into his new skin as a fully formed solo stylist.

Once again produced by Jerry Fuller, the album leaned even more decisively into lush, cinematic orchestration. The title track remained one of the high points of early 1970s pop: grand, sweeping and built around a melodic arc that called on the full range of Lindsay’s vocal power. As a successor to Arizona, the second album exchanged the open-road optimism of the earlier album for something more expansive and atmospheric.

Elsewhere, Silverbird found its strength in material that bridged Top 40 polish and the emerging singer-songwriter sensibility. Lindsay’s reading of And the Grass Won’t Pay No Mind revealed a quieter, more inward voice, handling Neil Diamond’s reflective writing with surprising tenderness and restraint.

In the end, Silverbird helped define what might be called the Lindsay sound: soulful grit softened by velvet phrasing, framed within Fuller’s refined approach. At times it edges into the middle-of-the-road territory but it never lost its poise. More importantly, it confirmed that Arizona was no one-off success. Mark Lindsay had completed his transition from teen idol to mature contemporary artist, capable of sustaining a full album with confidence, control and grace.

Side One: Arizona, Something, Sunday mornin' comin' down, Love's been good to me, Small town woman, First hymn from Grand Terrace
Side Two: Miss America, The name of my sorrow, Leaving On a jet plane, I'll never fall in love again, Man from Houston

 

QUAH, by Jorma Kaukonen

Let me introduce you to an album called QUAH. Yes, QUAH. Spelled exactly like my surname. Pure coincidence, of course, but I’ve always liked that about it. It’s a low-key album from 1974, mostly acoustic, built around finger-picking blues and folk, and it doesn’t try very hard to announce itself. You either lean in or you miss it.

This was Jorma Kaukonen’s first solo record after close to ten years as a founding member of Jefferson Airplane. If you came to it expecting psychedelic noise or group chemistry, you’d be completely wrong-footed. This is Kaukonen on his own, stripping things back, sitting with the guitar and seeing what he could do without the safety net of a band. There are eleven tracks here, and only two have vocals by Tom Hobson. Even then, the voice never really takes centre stage. The guitar does the talking.

Almost everyone I’ve played this album to reacts the same way when Genesis comes on. It’s the first track, and it doesn’t mess around. No warm-up, no scene-setting. Just Kaukonen’s fingers moving with a kind of calm authority. His finger-picking is so clean and controlled that it’s easy to miss how hard it actually is. It sounds natural, almost casual, but it isn’t.

I’ve listened to a lot of guitar players over the years, and Kaukonen is one of those rare ones who doesn’t feel the need to prove anything. On QUAH, he just plays. No tricks, no fuss. You either get drawn into it, or you don’t. And if you do, it stays with you.

ADDENDUM: I also own QUAH on compact disc format, which featured the album's original cover design. On this CD are four bonus tracks which did not make it to the record: Lord have mercy, No mail today, Midnight in Milpitas and Barrier.

Side One: Genesis, I'll Be All Right, Song For The North Star, I'll Let You Know Before I Leave, Flying Clouds, Another Man Done Gone
Side Two: I Am The Light Of This World, Police Dog Blues, Blue Prelude, Sweet Hawaiian Sunshine, Hamar Promenade

Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali

Dateline: 27 November 2025. Another daunting day of travel was ahead of us. We were told the night before that the coach would be leaving the Imperial Kushinagar at 5.30 in the morning. That ruled out any hope of a proper breakfast. Instead, food packs would be handed out before departure. The explanation was simple enough: Rajgir was our final destination for the day, and even under favourable conditions it would take close to nine hours of driving along India’s national highways. In theory, there would be stops along the way but anyone who has travelled these roads knows that schedules here are more aspiration than promise. As it turned out, we did not reach the Rajgir Residency until about 6.45 in the evening. Thirteen hours on the road.

To reach Kesariya, and indeed Vaishali and Rajgir, we crossed back into Bihar, arriving there around eight in the morning. The Kesariya Buddha Stupa is a site of immense historical and spiritual weight. It is often described as the largest Buddhist stupa in the world by circumference, and possibly once the tallest as well. Today it rises to about 104 feet, with a vast girth approaching 400 feet, but before the great earthquake of 1934 it is thought to have stood closer to 150 feet. Seen from above, its terraced form resembles a giant mandala. Only part of the structure has been fully excavated. Much of it still lies buried beneath earth and vegetation.

Kesariya is bound to one of the most poignant episodes of the Buddha’s final journey. As he travelled from Vaishali towards Kushinagar, knowing that his parinibbāna was near, the Licchavis of Vaishali followed him in grief, unwilling to turn back. To persuade them to return home, the Buddha was said to have given them his alms bowl as a keepsake. Tradition held that an original mud stupa was raised here to enshrine it, and that successive generations added layer upon layer, until the monument grew to its monumental scale. The alms bowl itself has long since disappeared, its fate unknown.

After lunch at the Vaishali Residency, our next stop brought us deeper into Vaishali, to the Buddha Relic Stupa, among the most sacred sites in the Buddhist world. According to the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, after the Buddha’s cremation at Kushinagar, his relics were divided into eight portions and distributed among eight clans. The Licchavis received one share and enshrined it here. For centuries, the stupa lay hidden as an unremarkable mud mound. Excavations in the twentieth century revealed, deep within its core, a small casket containing relic ash mixed with earth, along with a fragment of conch, two glass beads, a thin gold leaf and a copper punch-marked coin. These relics are now preserved nearby in the Buddha Samyak Darshan Museum and Memorial Stupa.

We still found time to visit Kolhua, where the Ananda Stupa and Ashoka Pillar stood side by side in one of the most striking archaeological ensembles in India. The Ashoka Pillar, rising some 18.3 metres, is among the emperor’s finest surviving works, remarkable for its restraint and state of preservation. A bell-shaped lotus supports a square abacus, above which sits a single, life-sized lion facing north, towards Kushinagar. Nearby, the Ananda Stupa commemorates the Buddha’s devoted cousin and attendant. Tradition places the Buddha here during his stays in Vaishali, and it was in this area that he delivered his final discourse and announced his impending passing. Scattered around the main mound are the remains of dozens of smaller votive stupas left by ancient pilgrims.

Our final visit of the day was to the newly inaugurated Buddha Samyak Darshan Museum and Memorial Stupa, built to house and interpret the relics discovered at Vaishali. We spent a short while there in quiet contemplation, largely oblivious to the curious glances of other visitors. From there, at last, we pressed on to Rajgir, arriving exhausted, with the long day finally behind us.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 8: Gridhakuta (Rajgir) 

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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