I'm so tired...

Well, the answer was:

3. Run screaming away from the heat, lack of cigarettes and boredom around day 3

Sitting around doing nothing all day is hard, despite my extensive experience.

Full credit to the levitators, what I did was very interesting though and I think it would have been a life-changing experience if I could have stuck it. Next time, meditation course, next time. One delight was walking around the grounds, which were full of enough frogs to fill every boy's terrarium dreams.

Bodhgaya was lovely. This is where the Buddha gained enlightenment and there is a good mix of people - nearly every Buddhist country has a temple here. Here's the Tibetan one, music by little Tibetans in training:

There are Buddhist tourists from Sri Lanka and East Asia, Tibetans in exile who come from Nepal and the mountains of northern India during the cool season, and western tourists who do the same. Because of it being off-season, or the general laid-back 'spiritual' atmosphere of the place, it's a lovely little town. There is some hassle but not much and western tourists aren't the main focus for Indians on the make. Things are kind of set up to have a nice and/or meditative time.

Here's the temple built where the Buddha gained enlightenment, originally marked by a pillar by Ashoka in 250BC, a temple built in 600AD, destroyed in the 13th century and rebuilt in the 19th:

Here's the bodhi tree (ficus religiosa) under which he sat. Well, not the original one. Ashoka had a branch sent to Sri Lanka and shortly after his wife destroyed the tree. The current tree was replanted from the Sri Lankan off-shoot.

Here's a guy I found playing cricket who I'd last met on the river bank opposite the Taj. I told him I'd see him later!

Here's a good friend in Bodhgaya who showed me around everywhere. The countryside is like this, minus the trees and hills, all the way up to the mountains of Nepal. Ho hum.