I didn't really go to India, I went to Bodhgaya, in the Northeastern province of Bihar. (See my January 1st journal entry for some of the fairly random reasons I chose this very out-of-the-way place as my destination). I flew in to Mumbai, intending to stay for a few days and explore, but ended up changing my plans and catching a train for Bodhgaya the very day I arrived. Because getting a train to Bodhgaya at that time was difficult, due to fact that Kalachakra, a very large event in Bodhgaya, was currently in progress, and it seemed prudent to catch a train while there was one with available space to be caught.

     Briefly, some background, with more details available in my journal, as well as any of a very large number of far more comprehensive sources: Bodhgaya, as the historical site of the Buddha's enlightenment, is, in many ways, the center of the Buddhist world. Virtually every nation in which Buddhism is an important part of its culture has a temple or monastery in Bodhgaya. And, as I mentioned, I chose to go at the time that Kalachakra was going on.

     And what Kalachakra is is a gathering of practicing Buddhists, Buddhist monks, generally interested parties, and, perhaps most significantly, a very large number of Tibetan refugees. Upwards of 150,000 people, according to one web site, although I think that number is probably a little on the high side. It is a time for worship by the masses and dharma talks from all the Lamas, including the Dalai Lama - although he was obliged to leave for Mumbai after just one day due to a stomach ailment. I tried to listen in, but listening was complicated. It involved using a shitty little radio tuned to a specific station that was supposed to be simulcasting in English, as well as in Chinese on a different station, to a very limited area of the grounds on which the talks took place. We're talking a few watts at best, and I never did get the damn thing to work. So I ended up spending a lot of time at the stupa built on the site of the Bodhi Tree, sitting and watching.

     What I learned from my trip to Bodhgaya is that Kalachakra is a chaotic event in a country that strikes many Westerners as being chaos-based anyway, and which was crawling with what I most hoped to avoid - thousands of young seekers, primarily from Europe, but also from America, Canada, and everywhere else. The sort that have given up their standard dress for local traditional garb and are making the most conscious and obvious effort to go native, kids who have converted to Buddhism without any idea of its history or the many, many directions in which it has spread. Basically, a bunch of Western neo-hippie seekers looking for a taste of enlightenment through contact with - well, something sacred that's supposed to be floating around the air in Bodhgaya. It was, during Kalachakra, not a good place for me to be, especially at this point in my trip. I had possibly one of the most moving experiences of my life there (see my postscript for details), and then two days later I started feeling really odd. I think it was a combination of over stimulation, a delayed blast of culture shock, and health problems which had come on slowly and that I had failed to recognize (I lost close to 30 pounds during the course of my trip, and I'm 6'2" and normally around 178 pounds - but odd as it may seem, when traveling alone in ill-fitting and baggy clothes purchased along the way and without access to mirrors, it is possible to lose that much weight and not really notice). Anyway, I went and sat around for a few hours at the stupa, watching the pilgrims and the monks and whatnot, and realized that my trip was over. I was burnt out and no longer wanted to go anywhere but home. Or more accurately, while I didn't particularly want to go home, I did particularly want to want to not be where I was, and was running short on resources and enthusiasm to find another destination that called out to me. So I left, the very next day. It was quite a trip, as described in my postscript.