Chinese New Year preparations

Since last Friday I’ve been waking at 5.30am to go marketing for Chinese New Year. It’s something I’ve done for years; it's become a ritual, almost a discipline. I thought I was being particularly kiasu this time, but when I reached the Kampong Baru market at 6.30am, the place was already in full swing. Clearly I wasn't the only one who believed that the early bird would get the freshest ikan and kay.

The vegetable section is always the most frenetic. Shoppers hover, point, select, reject. Poultry and seafood are not far behind, with fish still glistening on crushed ice and chickens being weighed and chopped with alarming efficiency. The fruit stalls do brisk business too, oranges and pomelos stacked in careful pyramids. Even the dried goods section is packed. Mushrooms, scallops, lily bulbs, waxed sausages, all essential for the festive kitchen.

It is chaotic in a way that only wet markets can be. Shoulders brush. Plastic bags swing. Everyone stretches forward to have their purchases totalled. The vendors perform mental arithmetic at astonishing speed. A few notes exchanged, sometimes an e-wallet beep, and the transaction is done. By 8am, the serious marketing is over until the next morning when we all return to repeat the exercise. From there it is a short cross to the adjacent food court for a quick, warm breakfast before driving home. This Chinese New Year marketing routine is tiring, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Back home, spring-cleaning has taken up the better part of the past few weeks. We tackled the house bit by bit, day by day. I would say we are 99 percent done, though there is always that mysterious remaining one percent that reveals itself at the last minute. Every room has been attended to. Walls wiped, ceiling and wall fans cleaned, cupboards emptied, tables and chairs dusted. Pots, pans and plates removed, washed, dried and returned orderly to their shelves. Curtains and sofa covers changed. Even the car porch has been cleared of fallen leaves and broken twigs, the floor scrubbed hard to rid it of moss and grime. The whole works.

Yesterday was set aside for the ancestral prayers. The evening before, I laid out the table. Yesterday morning came the formal invitation to my departed grandparents, my parents and my aunt to partake of the offerings of fruits, mee koo, huat kueh and assorted Chinese New Year cookies. One must not forget the unseen pair of door guardians; they too have to be informed to let the spirits into the house, otherwise the divination coins can be stubborn. Thankfully, there was no difficulty this year. I tossed the two coins and they landed one head and one tail at the first attempt, a clear sign that the invitation had been accepted.

After that came the other duties: putting up the New Year door sashes, wiping down the altar, tidying the joss urns. And then my own small ritual of bathing the image of Kuan Imm with perfumed water, done slowly and with some care.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. There will still be last-minute chores like washing the cars, mopping the floors, resetting the timer switches, checking that everything is in order. Such work is never truly finished. The kitchen will be busy with preparations for the reunion dinner, the Ooi Lor. My daughter is already home from Kuala Lumpur, and my son will return tomorrow. We plan to eat at about 7pm, unhurried.

After dinner, there will be the decorating of fruits with red paper strips, the folding of auspicious paper offerings to be burned at midnight. All must be completed by about 11.30pm. If my son has managed to secure a string of firecrackers, we might light them too. By the time the Year of the Horse is ushered in and the last embers fade, it will probably be close to 2am before we finally turn in.

And then, just like that, another year begins.

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya to Varanasi

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.

Questions of geography aside, there was another site in Bodhgaya whose significance was beyond dispute. Just across the Falgu River in the village of Bakraur stands the Sujata Stupa. It rises like a rounded mound of earth-coloured bricks, layer upon layer of ancient masonry. Compared to the Mahabodhi Mahavihara Temple, it feels almost humble. But Sujata had her place in Buddhist history, and this stupa commemorates her role. She was a village girl who, one day, offered a bowl of milk rice to a man who looked more dead than alive.

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.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 11: Varanasi  deer park

Previous: 

Nepal-India Days 9 and 10: Bodhgaya
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

The drunken concubine

We attended an Anhui cultural show at the recently opened Penang Waterfront Convention Centre last Sunday. Actually, we almost didn’t go. Chinese New Year is around the corner and the house was in mid-springclean mode. At our age, springcleaning is no small matter. Every cupboard opened feels like a wrestling match with history. We had been at it daily and were quite exhausted. In the end we told ourselves, enough lah, a couple of hours out won’t collapse the house. We needed a bit of breathing space too. So off we went.

The entire programme was conducted in Mandarin. I must confess I did not understand a single word that was uttered on stage. Zero. Thankfully the printed programme was bilingual, so at least I knew what was going on. Otherwise I would have been clapping blindly.

As with many Chinese-based events, there were speeches. Long ones. Everyone wanted to have their say. The state Exco member for tourism spoke. The Chinese Consul-General in Penang spoke. The organising chairman spoke. A representative from the Anhui Performing Arts Group spoke. And then perhaps someone else spoke. After a while, you just clapped politely and waited for the actual performances to begin.

When I first glanced at the programme sheet, I remember muttering that there were at least a few items worth staying for. The face-changing act, for one. Huangmei opera. Hui opera. Not everyday we get these in Penang.

The face-changing segment brought back memories. I first saw it perhaps more than 20 years ago at Dewan Sri Pinang when a Beijing opera troupe came to town. I still remember buying tickets for my aunt and her friend, giving them a small treat. That was my proper introduction to the art of rapid mask-changing. One moment red, next moment blue, then black, all in the blink of an eye. On Sunday, the effect was still magical. I know there must be technique, training and hidden mechanics involved, but my eyes still cannot catch the exact movement. It remains delightfully baffling.

This time, however, it was just my wife and I seated right in the front row behind the VIPs. No aunties in tow. Just the two of us, watching quietly.

The Huangmei opera segment began in an understated manner. A singer appeared first without full costume, and I must admit I felt a slight dip of disappointment. Opera without costume feels incomplete. But soon enough other performers emerged properly attired, and a scene from Winning the Imperial Examination came alive. The two protagonists, Zhou Shan and Sun Juan, carried the piece. Sun Juan, I noted from the programme, was a recipient of the China Theatre Plum Blossom Award, which is no small accolade. Whatever nuances in dialogue I may have missed, the emotion carried through gesture, posture and melody.

The Hui opera excerpt was from The Drunken Concubine, with Wang Danhong in the leading role. She too was a Plum Blossom Award winner. Even without understanding the lyrics, one could appreciate the stylised movements, the vocal control and the distinctive musical phrasing that differentiated Hui opera from other regional forms. There is something about traditional opera, from the painted faces and the measured steps, to the deliberate hand gestures that transcends language. I might not have grasped the words, but I could sense the weight of tradition behind every movement.

By the end of the evening, I was glad we had decided to step away from dust cloths and ladders. The house still needed cleaning when we got home, of course. Age still made itself known in stiff shoulders and aching backs. But for a few hours, we had traded dusters and clutter for gongs and silk sleeves. Sometimes that is enough.

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.

Next:

Nepal-India Day 9: Bodhgaya  

Previous: 

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