Monastery row

Because Bodhgaya belongs to no single school, the whole Buddhist world has built here. Along the roads radiating from the Mahabodhi stand monasteries raised by Thailand, Bhutan, Japan, Tibet, Vietnam, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and more — each in its own architecture, each keeping its own liturgy.

One event, many keys

To walk the monasteries in an afternoon is to see how differently the traditions dress the same truth. The Thai temple glitters in gold and steep gilded roofs; the Bhutanese temple covers its walls in vivid murals of the life of the Buddha; the Japanese Indosan Nipponji keeps a spare, quiet hall; the Tibetan Namgyal monastery turns its great prayer wheels. Each welcomes visitors who remove their shoes and keep silence.

A living, international town

This is the modern miracle of Bodhgaya: a small Bihar town that is also the shared home of a global religion. Our guide walks the row with the group, explaining the tradition behind each hall, so that by the end the differences of colour and form resolve into a single, many-voiced devotion. We usually close at the Great Buddha statue as the afternoon light turns gold.