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Other entries in Gaya

Bodhgaya and The Bodhi Tree

We caught a 14 hour sleeper to Patna....to then catch a 3.5 hour bus ride to Bodhgaya...the place where Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree until he attained total enlightenment.  Before we left the village Luke had his hand stamped with henna!! a practise usually only done for girls at the time of the wedding....he he he.  Bodhgaya was great...we arrived in the evening ad retired early as we were exhausted from the 17.5 hours of travelling to get here.  The next day we woke up early to meditate under the Bodhi Tree where there is also a great temple....Luke teed up a 1.5-2 hour yoga class which with only me and Luke and the teacher in the room turned out to be the most intense and dynamic yoga I have ever done....it was a great way to start the day...especially in this most profoundly historic and special place!  Whilst here only for a short time we managed to befriend these two young guys Anshu and Om.  Om took us to the rooftop of his house where we sat and had some chai....we checked out this place where they mad and sold the most finest stone Buddhist statues we had ever seen...we made a few purchases before saying goodbye to Bodhgaya.  Anshu as really friendly and he accompanied us by auto-rickshaw to Gara railway station where Luke and I were to catch a train to Varanasi...3.5 hours away.  Along the was though our driver stopped for some chewing tobacco and the next thing we knew we had an extra passenger doubling up with the driver on his seat....this guy was drunk as...we thought it might have been from beetelnuts....apparently if you take too many, it sends you into a like intoxicated state.  Not long after this guy had jumped on our rickshaw....he started threatening our driver and after we stopped for petrol demanded money from our driver, who handed him 10 rupees which wasnt enough...so he started to strangle our driver.....at this stage this guy was not only trying to kill our driver but jeopardising our arrival at the station to catch our train on time....I had to step in....I got out of the back of the rickshaw and grabbed this guy from behind and quickly pulled him off our driver and threw him off the rickshaw...he was so off his head that his reflexes were so slow that before he even knew what had happened we had left dirt in his face as we took off for the station to catch our train.  Anshu later told us that this man had showed him that he was carrying a pistol whislt we had stopped for petrol.  I would have still done the same thing knowing this the same.  We rode cattle class for 3.5 hours to Varanasi.  Luke and I managed to get a seat each and not soon after we had left Gaya, the train quickly became very packed....to the point where I had a little boy sitting on my lap and an elderly lady cramped in sitting at my feet...there was a guy standing right next to me who I think had never met a foreigner before and shook my hand with a big smile about a thousand times.

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