The view of Vulture's Peak as you ascend

At six o'clock the next morning we got down at Gaya where Ven. Pannasila was waiting. He could travel with us because he had just been replaced on the MahaBodhi Temple Management Committee by a Hindu, related to the Bihar minister running the state government from his jail cell.Bodhgaya is glorious! The MahaBodhi Temple is majestic and magnificent. Visakha's wheelchair proved invaluable. Ken and Bruce pushed her to the entrance stairs, so that she could walk without fatigue around the temple precincts.We began each day with worship in the narrow space in front of the main image. All around us, monks and nuns were reciting in their own traditions–Pali, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese.There was a steady stream of people circumambulating the shrine, past the Bodhi tree. Some made prostrations, others spun prayer wheels, many carried incense. Everywhere, worshipers chanted, mediated, or made bows. We could meditate anywhere without disturbance. In spite of the cold and damp, pilgrims thronged in silence from early morning to late at night. All were centered upon the place and the liberating event that had occurred there more than two thousand six hundred years ago.One morning we visited Mucalinda Pond, a kilometer from the temple, where the Naga King had protected Buddha from the storm. Standing beside the pond, enshrouded by mist, we read the Mucalinda Sutta. A cluster of curious village children gathered around and listened with rapt attention.We also visited the village of Sujata, the woman who had offered the Bodhisatta rice cooked in milk before enlightenment. There is an Asokan stupa there, but it is not much more than a hill now. The families in that ancient hamlet still keep cows.
In the afternoon we went to Magadh University to meet some of the monks Buddhist Relief Mission is supporting. They have to buy their own food, but by forming small groups and combining resources, they are able to manage.We had been warned about the main road from Bodhgaya to Rajgir, so our driver decided on the back road, a narrow "lane" running through villages. In some places we could have reached out and touched the doorjambs. Bihar–extreme poverty, caste violence, corruption and hopelessness! It is disheartening to realize that the most important Buddhist sites are in the poorest and most lawless state in the country.Veluvana was the bamboo grove King Bimbisara donated to Buddha. In the center of the well-kept garden is a tank, the only place positively identified. No one is sure where the Squirrels' Feeding Ground was.