From Delhi:- Overnight Bodhgaya Tour with Return Flight

Where it happened

Bodhgaya is where Siddhartha Gautama sat down under a fig tree and got up as the Buddha. It is the most important site in the Buddhist world, and it is 1,000 km from Delhi — which is why this runs by air rather than road.

Getting there

Flight from Delhi to Gaya or Varanasi, met on arrival, and transferred by road. One night, returning the next day.

The Mahabodhi Temple

UNESCO-listed, and the current structure is largely 5th or 6th century, built on a site Emperor Ashoka marked with a shrine in the 3rd century BCE. The 55-metre pyramidal tower is one of the oldest brick buildings in India still standing.

The Bodhi Tree behind it is a direct descendant of the original — grown from a cutting taken to Sri Lanka in the 3rd century BCE and brought back after the parent tree died, which means the lineage is documented rather than legendary.

Beneath it is the Vajrasana, the polished sandstone slab Ashoka placed to mark the exact spot of the enlightenment.

Monks from every Buddhist tradition circumambulate the temple from before dawn. Sitting on the lawn for an hour and watching that is what most people remember.

The international monasteries

Every Buddhist country has built a temple here, and they are startlingly unalike: the Thai monastery with its curved gold roof, the Japanese Indosan Nipponji, the Bhutanese with its painted murals, the Tibetan Karma temple with its prayer wheels, and the 25-metre Great Buddha Statue completed in 1989.

Walking between them in an afternoon is a tour of Buddhist architecture across Asia.

What to know

Shoes off within the Mahabodhi complex, and the inner area has its own rules. Photography is restricted in parts of it. The Dalai Lama teaches here most Decembers or Januaries, which fills the town completely.

Two options

With a three-star or four-star hotel, flights, transfers and guiding included.

Practical

Winter, October to March, is the season. Bihar in May is severe.