From the Buddha's Place of Enlightenment

Bodh Gaya is a small city in the Gaya district in the Indian state of Bihar. This is the first and most important of our stops at Buddha's holy places. It's so exciting to be here, we just had lunch together at an Indian restaurant called OM and I stepped next door to a little Internet cafe.

We took the overnight train from Delhi last night, arriving at the train station about 7:30 AM today. The journey was smooth although we needed to keep one guard awake at all the times to keep tabs on our bags. We took one hour shifts in the group of six people I was with. Ours was a third-class berth with air conditioning, and there were six bunks all chained together, three on each side. Kunchok, Hollee, Wongmo, Betsi, Rinchin and I were together. Each bunk came with two clean flat sheets, a wool blanket, and a pillow. Cockroaches and mice were complementary and abundant. One interesting part of the journey was that Kunchok took Hollee and I on a tour of the non-air conditioned third class, and that was very crowded and more dirty. We went past the kitchen and observed a man washing potatoes in a big tub of water on the floor... using his feet. We'd just eaten the veggie pakora dinner, which had pototoes, so that was perhaps too much information for me to see how the food was prepared.

We lost some people and gained a few on the pilgrimage in the transition to Bodh Gaya. I'll post something about everyone who has been on the tour when I get a chance. Gotta run for now.