Off the grid

Kathmandu seems much more orderly than any city in India.  Drivers are more courteous, streets are cleaner, not so much honking.  No cows, no stray dogs.  Maybe it's just the crowding down there, or maybe it's the altitude up here.  The train from Bodh Gaya was going to be 8 hours late, getting me to Varanasi at 4-5am, with a 12:00 flight to Kathmandu.  I could not do it, so I had the IRCTC (Indian National Railway) travel office in Gaya Junction hire a car to drive me back the 300Km to my hotel on the Ganges.  Scary, miserable drive in the dark, with me speaking no Hindi, and the young driver speaking no English.  The highway is the main road from Delhi to Calcutta, but it was in such disrepair or being redone, or something, that often 30mph was all that was possible. That was good sometimes, because the huge trucks and farm tractors, bicycles and auto-rickshaws that are also on the road have no tail lights, so when we did get to 50/60mph, it made me think I was not long for this world.  Anyway, the trek begins tomorrow at 6am with a 6 hour drive to a town where we will rest and begin walking the next morning.  I wanted to upload some images from Bodh Gaya before I lost all contact with the digital world.

The banyan tree where Sujata met the emaciated acetic and offered him sweet milk rice...

Villages on the way to the cave...

Siddhartha walked this path and crossed the riverbed...

Around the cave..