Bodh Gaya

The place in the Ganges plain where Siddhartha Gautama, after six years of austerities that nearly killed him, sat beneath a pipal tree and resolved not to rise until he understood. What he understood there made him the Buddha. The Mahabodhi Temple marks the spot, and a descendant of the original Bodhi Tree still grows beside it, propagated from cuttings across twenty-five centuries.

Bodh Gaya is a quiet place on the bank of the Phalgu river in Bihar. The tradition is that the Buddha sat down under a tree here after years of fasting had brought him nothing at all, and decided not to get up until he understood. What he reached that night became the four noble truths. A descendant of the tree still grows beside the temple, and pilgrims have been coming for more than two thousand years, which makes it one of the longest continuously venerated sites anywhere.