India and Nepal On a Buddhist pilgrimage

The taxi driver hasn&rsquot even heard of the station from which this train leaves, and nor have I. New Delhi&rsquos little-used Safdarjang railway station turns out to be tucked away along a railway line behind a veterinary hospital in Moti Bagh. Departure from here promises an unusual journey.

Entering the station mid-afternoon, this hunch is pleasantly confirmed. Passengers are greeted with garlands, before being ushered to a counter where luggage is tagged, mentioning name and nationality, and a neatly wrapped welcome gift &mdash an excellent slim guidebook titled Walking with the Buddha Buddhist Pilgrimages in India &mdash is presented. Luggage is loaded on to the train by coolies who &mdash to my astonishment &mdash quickly decline payment and depart, declaring that everything has already been paid for. Passengers are then escorted back to the platform, and seated on chairs facing a dais of shehnai players, who puff their cheeks blowing auspicious notes of music.

Most of the faces around have East Asian features. The Maha Parinirvan Express, as this train is named, targets a pilgrim market, which includes Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, among other countries. On this trip, the middle-aged men wearing spotless white shirts and trousers and carrying identical blue bags with an orange stripe are from Thailand. A younger set of people, with formidable cameras, is Korean. Over the eight days and seven nights of the journey, we are all to be transported, by train when possible and by road if necessary, to the places where Buddha was born, achieved enlightenment, preached his first sermon, and died.

Soon after the train leaves Delhi, multilingual announcements begin. While tea is served, I think about the recent email, which warned passengers not to expect the luxurious standards of other special trains, like the Palace on Wheels and the Deccan Odyssey. The Maha Parinirvan Express aims to offer the lesser, but quite adequate, amenities of the Rajdhani Express. In the circumstances, this seems entirely appropriate. Buddha left his palace, renouncing royal privilege, when he embarked on his quest 2,500 years ago. It wouldn&rsquot do for us to follow his footsteps in a palace, even if it is a Palace on Wheels.

Indian trains move energetically at night. The next morning, our Buddhist Rajdhani arrives at Gaya. Wake-up is at 5am, with an announcement followed by the musical chanting of &lsquoBuddham Sharanam Gachchami&rsquo, setting a pattern that we will get accustomed to over the next few days.

After morning tea on the train, we board our buses and move towards a modern hotel in Bodhgaya, where the main gate opens to let us enter. A closed main gate &mdash closed even at midday &mdash turns out to be a feature of the hotels in the regions of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh we will travel through. It&rsquos a telling emblem of insecurity.

Two hours later, passing a Tibetan market, restaurants in tents, and pavement stalls selling beads, we proceed towards the nearby Bodhgaya temple complex. This is the most important Buddhist site in the world in one view, within it lies the centre of the world. The main temple structure, some 50m high, soars out of a sunken courtyard. Monks &mdash tonsured, robed and often bespectacled &mdash glide silently around, with quietly demonstrative piety. Prayer flags flutter from surrounding railings. Outside the temple, protected by a stone enclosure, is a pipal tree contorted with age. The faithful believe that it is a descendant of the original Bodhi tree under which the Buddha received enlightenment. A large gilded Buddha statue set against a blue background stands inside the temple. Access to the deity is immediate. As we file past, I&rsquom struck by how easy the process has been. What a contrast with the queues at Tirupati, the crowds at Guwahati&rsquos Kamakhya temple, or the tense excitement of joining the throng at the temple of Jagannath in Puri

Evening falls peacefully in Bodhgaya, lights come gently on. After sitting for a while, I am no longer sure whether the sacred chants I hear come from outside, or from within my mind.

Other halts over the next few days include Rajgir. Rajgriha means &lsquoroyal abode&rsquo. When the Buddha was preaching, the king (543-491 BC) had the resonant name of Bimbisara. Only the foundations of some ancient structures now remain. Bandits still operate in this region. Escorted by policemen with rifles, we climb a curving, brick-paved and beggar-lined path, to the hilltop where the Buddha meditated.

Nalanda, which we also visit, was once a celebrated Buddhist university, but times change. When the Chief Minister of Bihar visited the area recently, disgruntled villagers threw lumps of earth at him. Passing a sign, which says, &ldquoA tree is as lovely as a poem&rdquo, we arrive at extensive ruins set among green fields. It is said that Buddha often halted in the vicinity. Visible now are the remains of courtyards with pillared verandahs, flanked by scholars&rsquo cells kitchens and wells monasteries and shrines, both large and small.

Another day takes us to Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon, and where the sangha or the order of monks began. The 43m-high Dhamekh Stupa &mdash a cylindrical mass of brickwork resting on a circular stone drum about 30m in diameter, carved with leaves and floral patterns, birds and human figures &mdash dominates the surroundings.

The Asokan pillar with its lion-capital, which forms the national crest of India, is housed in the Sarnath Museum. It was discovered by the executive engineer F.O. Oertel in 1904-1905. Like all Indians, I have glanced at the crest thousands of times on currency notes but when I enter the Sarnath Museum, and find my eyes at the level of the lions&rsquo toe nails, the fineness of the carving is enough to make me laugh with pleasure. The lion capital is over two metres high. Four seated lions, looking in four directions, emerge majestically from one block of grey stone, above an abacus with four running animals &mdash an elephant, a bull, a horse and a lion &mdash which seem to have run so gracefully through the over 2,000 years of Indian history since they were carved, that their vigour is still intact.

The same afternoon in Varanasi, we sally out confidently to see the nightly Ganga aarti at Dasaswamedh Ghat. Soon our bus gets stuck in traffic for so long that we proceed on foot, through eye-smarting pollution and garbage. Our tour guide attaches a white cloth to a stick and holds it up so that his flock can locate him. In due course we mount cycle-rickshaws, which take us into narrow lanes, where they get stuck in cycle-rickshaw jams.

A day later the destination is Lumbini in Nepal. Getting there is a five-hour, bone-rattling, backbreaking journey from the railhead at Gorakhpur. Fields of mustard and sugarcane stretch into the distance.  Just before the border is a stop where our guide advises us to use the toilets. The toilets are surreally clean the Thais, who  built them, still supervise their maintenance. Where a foreign power has to build toilets on Indian territory (whether it thereby violates national sovereignty or not), things have come to a pretty pass.

A Thai priest leads the passengers in prayer as our bus approaches Lumbini. A peculiarity of this trip is that we have often trooped behind a monk with a megaphone. We follow him to the watertank where the Buddha was bathed after he was born in Lumbini Grove. Then we go to a stupa, to what we are told is the Buddha&rsquos footprint in stone, protected by bulletproof glass.

By contrast, Kushinagar on the next day is an easy excursion. The Mahaparinirvan temple houses a long reclining Buddha statue. Bags are unpacked, producing rich red cloths with which the statue is reverentially covered, and prayers are offered at the place where the Buddha passed away. A nearby sign prohibits worship. On this trip, at many museums and archaeological sites, signboards state that worship is prohibited invariably, one sees undiscouraged pilgrims with hands boldly folded, or touching the exhibits with furtive faith.

If you are keen to cover this particular pilgrim circuit, there&rsquos much to be said in favour of buying a ticket for these eight days of religion on rails, or what might be called Railway Buddhism. In an area which can feel like the Wild West with caste wars thrown in, the Indian Railways has come up with a package that allows visitors to travel safely, without indignity or indigestion. There is always an escort the security measures, both on the train and off it, are completely convincing. Oblivious to the violent language bandied around them, the railway staff exude courtesy. The train is your refuge and &lsquoRailways Sharanam Gachchami&rsquo might well be its motto. It protects you from your surroundings, offering Buddha without Bihar, or at least much of its uncertainty, brutality, and aggression.

Agra is, incongruously, the last halt. The Taj Mahal, approached in pollution-free, battery-operated buses, is currently guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force. &lsquoPure and safe&rsquo drinking water is supplied within the premises by the Archaeological Survey of India. Through the haze, which lends added mystery, we contemplate this monument, so familiar and yet so beautiful. At the end of our pilgrimage we have reached a place that has nothing to do with Buddhism, but as the passengers of the Maha Parinirvan Express laugh delightedly and pose for photographs, no one&rsquos complaining.

The information

Tour facts The Maha Parinirvan Special Train was launched by the Indian Railways to commemorate the 2,550th year of Budhha&rsquos Mahaparinirvan. The train covers the major Buddhist pilgrimage centres in India, and Lumbini in Nepal. The train is similar to a Rajdhani in terms of comfort and services offered. While the Railways offers 8D7N tours, it is possible to book tours of a shorter duration, with a minimum stay of three days. In the regular tour, tourists spend five nights on the train and two nights in hotels.

A major stretch of the train&rsquos route is through the badlands of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. For the security of the passengers, Railway Protection Force personnel and private security guards are present on the train and during most of the excursions.

The route Delhi-Gaya (excursions to Bodhgaya, Nalanda, Rajgir)-Varanasi (Sarnath)-Gorakhpur (Lumbini, Kushinagar)-Gonda (Shravasti)-Agra-Delhi

Tariff Rs 6,038 for 1A, Rs 4,226 for 2A and Rs 3,542 for 3A (tariffs are per person per night). The tariff is inclusive of accommodation on the train and in hotels, all meals, air-conditioned road transport, sightseeing trips and visits to the pilgrimage sites, entrance fee at monuments, guide fee, visa facilitation at Lumbini and an insurance cover.

Contact DGM-Tourism Marketing, IRCTC 011-23701100 www.railtourismindia.com