India Caprice, Part 9 - Final Act

The penultimate day in India, I chose to forgo the morning bathing in the Ganges, and slept instead; I was glad to have the extra sleep. I couldn’t imagine wanting to bathe in that dead river filled with ashes and bones.

Huge stupa, built during Buddhist period

After breakfast, though, I joined the group for the trip to Sarnath, a Buddhist holy site several miles from Varanasi.  Legend has it that the Buddha delivered his first sermon to his five disciples there shortly after he became enlightened.  Here, too, was a large Buddhist monastery, active from the 3^rd century BC to the 11^th century AD.  It contained a huge stupa, a circular building containing some relic of the Buddha.  It was built initially by Ashoka (3^rd century BC) and amplified (doubled or tripled in diameter) in the 5^th century AD - apparently the during height of Buddhist art, architecture and political influence in India. 

The monastery seems to have been abandoned after the Muslim invasions and only rediscovered by the British who, during their archaeological excavations, also found pieces of a column erected by Ashoka the great.  The Ashoka pillar had an inscription on it in only one small section, which seemed a little artificial to me.   The column’s capital of four lions is housed in a nearby museum and constitutes a major contemporary Indian symbol and icon.   In the same museum are numerous statues, mostly of the Buddha, excavated from nearby sites. 

Ashoka pillar, guarded by fences and grills

Gold leaf rubbed onto the bricks of the ancient ruins.
Seemed like a waste to me.

In the afternoon, we went to a place that did brocade work, and I bought a scarf and a couple of table runners – one hand-made and moderately expensive and the other machine-made and cheaper.  In the evening, we had the farewell dinner for the trip.  I was not sorry that the trip was nearly over.  The following morning (day 14), we had a yoga lesson before breakfast (by a yoga master) and, after breakfast, a lecture on Hinduism by our guide (Ghopal), which was very informative.

We left for the airport about one o’clock but had to wait for quite a while because our flight was delayed.  Apparently, in-country flights are frequently delayed.  In Delhi, we went to a hotel in Gurgaon (another Radisson, I believe), which seemed to be the nicest hotel we stayed in during the entire trip except for the hotel in Ranthambore.  I wish we had stayed there the first two or three nights in Delhi instead of at the Crowne Palace.

I did get a couple hours of sleep there before we had to be up and out again at midnight to catch a 3:30 AM flight to London.  Four of us were on that flight, which was long and dark, and during which I managed to sleep for several hours on the plane.  Then the four of us all went our separate ways at Heathrow.  The transfer between planes this time was not nearly as grim as it had been on the way over.  Now I am left to try to make some sense – a story, a parable, a fantasy – of my experiences in India.  Perhaps it will be about cows.