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) 

Previous: 
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

Jupiter's moons

I’m still quite thrilled from the night-sky photography I managed tonight with my Olympus. I stepped outside just to have a look at the moon. With the full moon due next Tuesday, it was already about 93 percent illuminated, blazing away in the sky. Normally that kind of brightness, plus light pollution, would wipe out almost everything else, but there it was: a sharp point of light nearby that could only be Jupiter.

Getting a photo of it was another matter. I had to handhold the camera and drop the shutter speed to a risky one-fifth of a second. Most of the shots were a mess, either blurred or streaky beyond saving, and I was close to giving up. But one frame survived. When I pulled it up on the computer, I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was better than anything I’d managed in all my previous attempts over the years. Sharp and without any streaky lines. I could clearly make out the four Galilean moons. A quick check online confirmed their positions relative to Jupiter, and that was the moment it really sank in.

Speaking of Jupiter, it turns out my timing couldn’t have been better. About 20 days ago, on the 10th of January, the Earth passed directly between the sun and Jupiter. That put the planet at what astronomers call opposition, when it sits opposite the sun in our sky and is at its best for observation. In fact, Jupiter was actually closest to Earth a day earlier, on the ninth of January, at a distance of about 633 million kilometres. At opposition it was shining away at magnitude –2.7, the fourth brightest object in the sky after the sun, moon and Venus. But with Venus tucked behind the sun in mid-January, Jupiter has effectively been the brightest starlike object in the night sky for weeks now, visible for much of the night. Given that Jupiter takes almost 12 Earth years to complete one orbit of the sun, this kind of alignment only comes around roughly every 13 months. The next one won’t be until 10 February 2027, which makes nights like this feel a bit more special.

Mamas and Papas

The Mamas & the Papas were part of my growing-up years. As teenagers, we knew California Dreamin’, Monday, Monday and Dedicated to the One I Love because they turned up regularly on Radio Malaysia and Radio RAAF Butterworth. Beyond those three songs, the rest of their output was largely a mystery to me. That is why, when a friend passed me a copy of 20 Golden Hits in the 1990s, I was taken aback to find a double album’s worth of material. It said a great deal about how deeply the group had once lodged itself in our everyday lives.

Listening again to 20 Golden Hits reminded me of just how brief and explosive the moment of The Mamas & the Papas really was. For a group that existed for barely three years, their hold on the sound of the mid-1960s remained strong. This compilation, first issued in the early 1970s after they broke up, captured that moment almost in full. With only five studio albums to their name, a collection like this felt definitive.

At the heart of the record is the group’s unique vocal chemistry. John Phillips shaped their songs and harmonies. Michelle Phillips added a cool presence, visually and vocally. Denny Doherty carried many of the leads with a smooth and elastic voice. And then there was Cass Elliot, whose sheer presence and personality gave the group its most recognisable human centre. On these recordings, their voices did not compete so much as complement, stacking emotion in layers.

The songs traced their rise and decline. Early hits like California Dreamin’ and Monday, Monday were fully formed, confident and expansive, while later tracks carried a sense of strain within the members. Creeque Alley turned their own history into pop mythology, name-checking friends and failures. Even the title of Dedicated to the One I Love carried a hint of fragility, as if everyone involved knew how precarious things already were.

California Dreamin’ remains the emotional core of the album. The song that came to define sun-drenched West Coast longing was written during a bitter New York winter, when John and Michelle Phillips were holed up in Greenwich Village and dreaming of escape. The imagery of brown leaves and grey skies is not symbolic so much as literal. It came from what they were living through at the time. The stop at a church, the pretending to pray, the ache for warmth and light, all grew out of that moment. Even the haunting flute solo felt like cold air moving through an empty street, a sound that carried the chill of that season straight into the song.

What made 20 Golden Hits particularly satisfying was its sound. Issued at a time when stereo remastering was taken seriously, it allowed the group’s harmonies to breathe. I could hear how carefully constructed these songs were, even when they presented themselves as effortless.

As a portrait of a band, 20 Golden Hits succeeded because it was more than a convenient collection of hits. It was the sound of a brief, intense California dream, captured at its height and preserved just long enough for us to hear its radiance.

Addendum: I also own a compact disc of the best of the Mamas and the Papas, where Mama Cass’ solo work after the band’s breakup is represented by four songs: Dream a Little Dream of Me, It’s Getting Better, Make Your Own Kind of Music and I Can Dream, Can’t I?

That compact disc, with its handful of solo tracks, hinted at a much larger and more complicated chapter in Cass Elliot’s life after the Mamas & the Papas came apart. When the group fractured in 1968, she emerged both liberated and exposed. For the first time, she was free of the internal politics and personal entanglements that had defined the band, but she was also left to navigate an industry that had never quite known what to do with a woman of her size, intelligence and force of personality.

Cass moved quickly into a solo career, releasing Dream a Little Dream in 1968, followed by Bubblegum, Lemonade &… Something for Mama and Make Your Own Kind of Music. Although commercial success was uneven, she continued to work steadily and refused to disappear quietly.

Her personal life remained turbulent. Deeply affected by the breakdown of the band and by years of being underestimated and judged for her appearance, she worked hard and struggled with health issues. By the early 1970s, the optimism of the “California dream” years had given way to a more demanding reality.

Cass Elliot’s death in 1974 at just 32, closed that chapter and froze her public image in place. In the years since, she has often been remembered as a tragic figure or as a symbol of a lost era. Yet looking at her life after the Mamas & the Papas, what stands out is not failure or decline, but persistence. She kept working, experimenting and asserting her presence in a fast-moving industry. If there is sadness in that story, it lies in how little time she was given to finish becoming who she wanted to be. 

Side 1: California dreamin', Dedicated to the one I love, I call your name, Twelve-thirty (young girls are comin' to the canyon), Creeque alley
Side 2: Dancing in the street, For the love of Ivy, Go where you wanna go, My girl, Look through my window
Side 3: Monday Monday, Words of love, Twist and shout, I saw her again last night, Dream a little dream of me
Side 4: People like us, You baby, Got a feelin', Trip stumble and fall, Straight shooter

Walk for peace

Since last month soon after retuning from my trip to Nepal and India, I've been following the daily progress on the Walk of Peace involving some 20 Theravadin monks - and a dog named Aloka - in the United States.  This is just about the best positive exposure for Buddhism that I've seen in many years! What makes the Walk of Peace so arresting is not the immense scale of the walk but the way it unfolds almost without explanation. Twenty monks in saffron robes walking along highways and rural roads, day after day, from Texas towards Washington, DC, is not something most Americans expect to encounter in the course of their ordinary life. There are no banners, no speeches, no appeals shouted through loudhailers. The message arrives on foot at walking pace, and asks nothing except to be noticed.

The journey began in October 2025 at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center in Fort Worth, led by Bhante Pannakara, a former IT engineer from Vietnam, and from the outset it was conceived as an act of presence rather than persuasion. Over roughly 2,300 miles, crossing Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, the monks have moved steadily eastward through towns and countryside, through rain, shine or snow. Their symbolically potent destination is the White House, where they are expected to arrive in mid-February 2026.

What they carry with them is deliberately spare. There are no sermons delivered at street corners, no leaflets handed out. The monks walk largely in silence, relying on mindfulness and the rhythm of their steps. Food and shelter come from the spontaneous generosity of strangers along the way. In an age of constant messaging and aggressive visibility, the refusal to explain oneself loudly becomes part of the meaning. Peace, compassion and non-violence are not demanded by the monks. Instead, they are acted out for all to see.

Walking with them is a stray dog named Aloka, who has quietly become the most recognisable figure of the pilgrimage. Aloka’s story began far from America, in Calcutta, India, where the dog first attached itself to Bhante Pannakara and began following him on his walk to Bodhgaya. It was not trained or summoned; it simply stayed. Over time, that companionship endured, and Aloka was eventually brought to Texas, where it settled into life at the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center. When the Walk of Peace began, Aloka joined without ceremony, padding along highways and back roads, sometimes trotting ahead as if scouting the way, more often keeping pace beside the monks, step by step, mile after mile. The dog neither chants nor teaches, yet its presence is powerful enough: loyalty without ownership, movement without destination, trust without words. For many who encounter or follow the pilgrimage, Aloka the Peace Dog has become its living emblem.

The public response suggests that something in this simplicity has struck a nerve. People line roadsides, slow their cars, offer flowers or join their palms in respect. Across social media, images of the walk have circulated far beyond the places the monks physically pass through, drawing followers from across religious and cultural lines. By January 2026, more than a million people were following the journey online, not because it promised spectacle, but because it offered a rare sense of steadiness in motion.

The walk has not been untouched by hardship and challenges. In November, a traffic accident in Texas seriously injured two monks. One of them, Bhante Dam Phommasan, later lost his leg as a result of his injuries. The incident cast a sharp light on the vulnerability inherent in such a journey, yet the walk continued, not as an act of defiance, but as a continuation of intent. Suffering, in this context, was not hidden or dramatised; it was absorbed into the larger discipline of endurance and compassion.

There is also a larger institutional story running quietly alongside the pilgrimage. The Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center has plans for an ambitious temple complex in Fort Worth, envisioned as a vast space of practice and contemplation. While the walk inevitably draws attention to this vision, the monks have been careful not to turn the journey into a fundraising exercise. The emphasis remains firmly on spiritual example rather than material outcome.

Seen as a whole, the Walk of Peace feels less like a campaign and more like a long sentence written across America one step at a time. It moves through regions marked by different histories, tensions and identities, yet refuses to take sides or offer solutions. Instead, it insists on a slower register, one in which national healing is imagined not through argument or policy, but through patience, restraint and the simple act of showing up on foot day after day.

Manitas de Plata

I was scrolling through YouTube late last night when one video caught my eye and pulled up old memories of watching Manitas de Plata on The Rolf Harris Show sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. That sent me digging through my record and compact disc collection until I found a few albums of his music and put them on again.

Manitas de Plata was one of those musicians whose life story sounded almost as improbable as his playing. Born Ricardo Baliardo in 1921 in a gypsy caravan in southern France, he came from Catalan Gitano stock and learned the guitar by listening, watching, copying and then pushing his fingers beyond what most people thought possible. He could not read music and for much of his life he could not read at all, but his hands did all the talking. His stage name, Manitas de Plata, Little Silver Hands, was no exaggeration.

For years, he had little interest in public fame. Music belonged to family, to the Gitano circle, to ritual and celebration. He played at private gatherings, weddings and the annual pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Concert halls and recording studios were not part of the plan. He did not make his first commercial recording until he was almost 40. While most musicians were already looking back, Manitas was only getting started.

His rise in the 1960s was something accidental. A New York photography exhibition by his friend Lucien Clergue caught the attention of American producers and suddenly this guitarist was pushed onto the international stage. Once the door opened, it stayed open. Records sold in vast numbers and he found himself playing in places far removed from the caravans of his youth.

At his peak, he became a fixture of the French Riviera jet set. Picasso adored him. Dalí, Bardot and others gathered around, entranced by the speed, fire and abandon of his playing. He was treated less like a musician than a force of nature, something raw and untamed that polite society could admire from a safe distance.

Yet among flamenco purists, Manitas was always divisive. To the wider public, he was crowned the King of Flamenco. In Spain, many bristled at the title. Flamenco rests on strict rhythmic discipline, but Manitas often treated those rules as optional. He played for feeling and effect, striking the guitar body like a drum or lifting one hand theatrically into the air while the other raced on. To some, this was heresy. To others, freedom.

Part of the unease lay in the fact that his flamenco was not quite Spanish. Born in France and influenced by the gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt, he created a hybrid later labelled rumba flamenca. His legacy is hard to escape. Modern Gipsy rumba owes him much. Within his own family, he was the patriarch of a musical dynasty. His son Tonino Baliardo and his nephews, the Reyes brothers, carried that sound into the mainstream as the Gipsy Kings, tracing a clear line back to Manitas.

He played Carnegie Hall 14 times, performed for royalty and his music still surfaces in films, including those by Martin Scorsese. The end, however, was tinged with irony. Despite earning millions and living fast, he died almost penniless in a retirement home in Montpellier in 2014 at the age of 93. He spent freely, supported a very large family and reportedly fathered more than twenty children.

In the end, Manitas de Plata left behind little in the way of possessions, but an unmistakable sound, a disputed crown and the sense of a man who played exactly as he lived: fast, fiercely and with little concern for what came after.

Side One: Moorish church, Dark Sarah, Homage to Baroncelli, Blessing of the sea

Side Two: Mr Jailer, Galop, Fandangos, Shepherd's song, One tear

Mark Tully (1935-2026)

When I was much younger, in my thirties and forties, listening to shortwave radio was a regular part of my life. And if you listened to shortwave long enough, the BBC World Service was almost unavoidable. It became a familiar presence on the dial, steady and dependable. What kept me there were the voices. Commentaries by people like Alistair Cooke and Mark Tully had a way of drawing you in. I could never quite get enough of them.

Whenever I came across their books, I bought them without much hesitation. Cooke’s Letters from America and Tully’s No Full Stops in India both found permanent places in my personal library. I still own those copies, though they now sit quietly in the storeroom, part of an earlier phase of life.

Today I learned of Mark Tully’s death in India, at the age of 90. There is a certain symmetry to it. Born in India, died in India, and in between he spent almost his entire working life there. From 1965 onwards, India was not just his beat but his home. For decades he was the BBC’s voice from the subcontinent, explaining India to the world with patience, curiosity and an ear for nuance. His was not a hurried journalism, but one that lingered, listened and tried to understand.

Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar

Dateline: 26 November 2025. The distance from the Tulip Inn Hotel in Shravasti to the Mahāparinibbāna Vihar in Kushinagar is only about 250 kilometres, but distance in northern India is misleading and never measured merely in kilometres. It took us close to eight hours in the coach we had hired for our travels, a full day shaped as much by patience as by movement. For long stretches, the road was a straightforward two-lane national highway, paved and reasonably well maintained, with short sections widened near larger towns. On paper, it looked manageable within six hours but in reality, this was farming country, with agriculture setting its own tempo. Tractors moved unhurriedly from field to field, motorcycles weaved around them, slow trucks lumbered along with improbable loads, and now and then livestock wandered across the road, unbothered by horns. Added the occasional rough patches left unrepaired and the inevitable congestion in market towns where the road narrowed due to life spilling onto it, the journey became less a drive than a steady, patient passage eastwards.

By the time we reached Kushinagar, it was around five o’clock and the sun had already set below the horizon. The coach stopped at the Mahāparinibbāna Vihar. This was not just another pilgrimage site on our itinerary but the place where the Buddha’s long journey came to its final rest. Kushinagar, known in ancient times as Kusinārā, was once the capital of the Malla republic. It was here, between twin sala trees, that the Buddha lay down at the age of 80 and entered Mahāparinibbāna, the final release beyond rebirth. It was also here that his body was cremated, before the relics were divided and enshrined across the subcontinent. These are facts one may already know, but arriving at dusk gives them a different weight.

The approach to the Mahāparinibbāna Vihar was marked by a light haze hanging low in the air, and as daylight faded into the blue hour, the entire site took on an unmistakably ethereal quality. One expected the atmosphere here to be sombre by nature, but what struck me was not heaviness so much as quiet gravity. As the light drained from the sky, the Mahāparinibbāna Vihar began to glow softly, its roof lights forming a gentle halo rather than a glare. Unlike the warmth of Jetavana’s red brick and earthen tones, everything here was an off-white: the temple walls and the bell-shaped Nirvana Stupa directly behind the main temple building. India’s ever-present haze tinted that whiteness faintly yellow with softening edges and blurring boundaries. 

As evening deepened, sound fell away. Where Jetavana carried a sense of movement and life, Kushinagar at dusk settled into stillness. The haze muffled the outside world, enclosing the temple grounds in a cocoon of calm. We all sensed it Our voices dropped, our footsteps slowed. Having arrived, there was now no sense for urgency.

Inside the Mahāparinibbāna Vihar, there were still other visitors along with the resident monks. At the centre lay the reclining Buddha, a six-metre-long image. aligned north-south and facing west, depicting not sleep but the moment of final passing. The statue, originally carved during the Gupta period and restored over centuries, was austere rather than dramatic. The Buddha lay on his right side, head resting on his hand, expression composed, eyes gently closed. The image was already draped in yellow cloth when we entered, a layer perhaps offered by pilgrims before us.

We made our obeisance, circumambulated the statue clockwise, and then settled down around it. The bhantes led us through some short chanting, their voices steady and echoing softly within the hall. After that, our group unfolded two large pieces of yellow cloth of our own and carefully draped them over the image, adding to the earlier layer. The monks then entered the inner perimeter to present robes while we remained watching.

Outside, we had hoped to organise another chanting session but the guards soon approached to inform us that it was getting late and the grounds would be closing. Even so, as we walked out, we were still able to pass by the Nirvana Stupa that marked the Buddha’s cremation site.

From there, we proceeded to The Imperial Kushinagar for the night, thereby completing the second of four essential sites in our itinerary. 

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Nepal-India Day 7: Vaishali 

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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

Nepal-India Day 6: Shravasti

Dateline: 26 November 2025. The only reason I can think of for our group to be in Shravasti, after travelling almost eight hours west into Uttar Pradesh, was to visit Jetavana. Saw See and I had come to India with open minds and few expectations, but even so, seeing Jetavana for ourselves came as a shock. This was an archaeological park, not one which we might normally associate with. The air felt dense with time, and the ground heavy with memory. For more than two decades, Jetavana had been the Buddha’s principal residence, the place where over 800 discourses were delivered. It was not merely a retreat but the intellectual and spiritual centre of early Buddhism.

Almost immediately, it was clear that Jetavana was not just a historical site but a living one. Groups of monks were everywhere, representing Buddhism from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Burma and Tibet, moving quietly through the ruins in saffron and maroon robes. The geography of early Buddhism may lie in northern India, but its living traditions had clearly travelled far and returned.

When we reached the Gandhakuti, the Fragrant Chamber where the Buddha had lived and meditated, a large group of Thai monks had already gathered there. They occupied the space completely, chanting in unison, unhurried and intent. There was no question of us squeezing in, our group of 38 monks and lay people, so we moved on and drifted towards the Anandabodhi Tree. 

The Anandabodhi Tree is said to be a direct descendant of the original Bodhi Tree at Bodhgaya. It was planted during the Buddha’s lifetime so that when he travelled, those who remained at Jetavana would still have a living focus for their devotion. When we arrived, there were few people around. The quiet gave us room to pause, to chant and sit for a while in meditation. Standing beside the tree, the logic of its planting made immediate sense.

Jetavana owed its existence to an act of devotion. Anāthapiṇḍika, a wealthy merchant whose name is usually translated as “feeder of the orphans”, was searching for a suitable place to house the Buddha and his monks. He found it in a park owned by Prince Jeta. The prince named an impossible price: the land would be sold only if it could be covered entirely with gold coins. Anāthapiṇḍika took him at his word, laying coin after coin until only a small patch remained. At that point, Prince Jeta relented. He donated the rest of the land and supplied timber for the buildings. What began as a challenge ended as an act of shared generosity. 

We eventually returned to the Gandhakuti. The Thai monks were still there. We waited a while, then paid our own homage quietly by lighting candles and offering flowers at the foundations that mark where the kuti once stood. Nothing remains of the structure itself, yet the place still draws devotion. 

Walking through the ruins, we became aware of how often this sensation would return during our time in India: the feeling of stepping across layers of time. Jetavana, in particular, is bound up with stories of transformation. It was here that Angulimāla, the feared bandit who wore a garland of fingers, encountered the Buddha and found redemption. Such stories feel less abstract when you are standing on the very ground where they are said to have unfolded.

Jetavana today is no longer home to thousands of monks. It is a quiet archaeological park. Yet it is far from empty. By the time we left, more monks and visitors had arrived. It was clear why Jetavana has become an essential stop on any Buddhist pilgrimage. Some places do not need to be reconstructed. They speak well enough through whatever ruins remain.

We left the Tulip Inn Hotel in Shravasti at nine o’clock, setting off on yet another eight-hour road journey, this time eastwards towards Kushinagar. Our destination was a different kind of sacred ground: the place where the Buddha attained Mahāparinibbāna.

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Nepal-India Day 6: Kushinagar

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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