Bodh Gaya

The town exists because of a single episode: the Buddha, then the ascetic Siddhartha Gautama, is said to have sat under a pipal tree beside the Falgu river in about the fifth century BC and resolved not to rise until he understood the causes of suffering. The place became known as the diamond throne, the Vajrasana, and the site was already a shrine when the Maurya emperor Ashoka visited in the third century BC and raised a temple and a stone railing, fragments of which survive.

The present brick temple, with its tall pyramidal tower, took shape in the Gupta period and was repaired and rebuilt many times afterwards, notably by Burmese missions in the 19th century. Chinese pilgrims such as Xuanzang described the site in the seventh century, when Buddhist monasteries were still numerous across Magadha. From about the 13th century Buddhism faded in its homeland, and the temple passed into the care of a Hindu monastic order whose head, the Mahant, held it for centuries; worship continued, but as a largely Hindu shrine.

Interest revived under British archaeology in the 19th century, when Alexander Cunningham and others documented and restored the complex. A long campaign begun by the Sri Lankan reformer Anagarika Dharmapala for Buddhist control of the site led eventually to the Bodh Gaya Temple Act of 1949, which placed the temple under a management committee of Hindus and Buddhists — an arrangement still argued over. From the 1950s foreign governments and Buddhist organisations built monasteries here, Tibetan exiles made it a winter centre for teaching, and in 2002 UNESCO inscribed the Mahabodhi temple complex as a World Heritage Site.

Bodh Gaya is unusual in India: a Bihari market town wrapped around an international Buddhist sanctuary. Within a few streets there are Theravada monasteries from Thailand, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, Mahayana temples from Japan, China, Korea and Vietnam, and Tibetan Vajrayana institutions from the Himalayan traditions, each keeping its own liturgy, robes, architecture and calendar. Their bells, chanting and drums overlap through the day, and the temple complex is one of the few places where all these schools worship side by side.

The local population, mostly Hindu and Muslim Magahi and Hindi speakers, lives alongside this. Many families depend on the pilgrim economy, and the town's schools, clinics and charities have been founded in part by Buddhist organisations from abroad. There is a long history of Hindu devotion here too, with the Falgu and the nearby town of Gaya central to rites for the dead, so the same landscape carries two quite different pilgrimages.

Meditation sets the tone of behaviour. Visitors are expected to walk quietly and clockwise around the temple and the tree, to dress modestly and to leave shoes at the gate. Prostration boards line the outer terrace, monks lead groups around the shrines, and the evening lighting of butter lamps draws crowds. The town is also familiar with long-staying foreigners on retreats, and the relationship between them, the monasteries and local residents shapes daily manners as much as the temple does.

Bodh Gaya is a small place: its population was under 31,000 at the 2001 census, a number that rises many times over in the winter pilgrimage season. Almost everything economic here follows that rhythm — guesthouses, restaurants, shops selling statues, incense and prayer flags, rickshaw and taxi drivers, guides, and the seasonal work of festival and teaching camps. Out of season, much of it closes and the town returns to farming.

The surrounding countryside of Gaya district grows rice, wheat and pulses on land that depends on an uncertain monsoon, and many households rely on money sent home by relatives working in Delhi, Punjab or the Gulf. Bihar remains India's poorest large state, and the district's indicators for literacy, health and employment are low, though the pilgrim trade, the airport and Magadh University give the town more work than similar-sized places nearby.

Daily life starts before dawn, with meditators at the temple, market traders on the Gaya road and farmers in the fields; shops close early, and there is little nightlife, in part because alcohol has been banned throughout Bihar since 2016. Electricity supply, water in the dry months when the Falgu runs to sand, traffic and waste in the temple lanes, and the management of the crowds at festivals are the town's recurring problems, alongside the tension between heritage protection and new building close to the complex.

Everyday food here is Bihari and vegetarian-leaning. Litti chokha is the regional standard: balls of wheat dough stuffed with sattu, roasted gram flour flavoured with garlic, carom seed and pickle spices, baked over coals, dipped in ghee and eaten with a mash of roasted aubergine, tomato and potato. Sattu is the other Bihari staple, whisked into cold water with lemon and salt as a drink in the hot months or into a sweet version with jaggery. Rice, dal, roti and seasonal vegetables make up most meals, with pickles and a papad.

Sweets belong to festivals and to the pilgrim trade: thekua, wheat biscuits fried in ghee and made in large quantities for the Chhath festival; tilkut, sesame and jaggery discs that Gaya is known for, pounded by hand in winter; and khaja, layered fried pastry soaked in syrup. Milk sweets, laddu and peda are sold near the temple as offerings as well as snacks.

The pilgrim town adds an international layer that is unusual in rural Bihar. Tibetan kitchens make momos and thukpa; small restaurants near the monasteries cook Thai, Japanese, Korean and Burmese dishes, mostly for their own communities, and simple cafés serve porridge, banana pancakes and coffee for the many visitors who spend weeks here. Most eating places are vegetarian, alcohol is not sold under state prohibition, and tea from roadside stalls, boiled with milk and sugar, is the constant.