Day 55 and 56 – Sarnath & Travel
Day 55 – Friday, 20th Dec 2013
Day 56 – Saturday, 21st Dec 2013
It’s Friday morning 10 am, Khyati and I are ready to leave for Sarnath as we hear some commotion on the road. Police are placing barricades and closing down the area for vehicular traffic. Soon, we hear that Narendra Modi – BJP’s prime ministerial candidate is in Varanasi city for a rally. This means that roads will be blocked till 3 pm. Ah! should we have left early, we wouldn’t have faced this problem.
No rickshaws are available to take us to the railway station and we start our walk. The station is 4.5 kms from our Dharamshala. After walking a km or so, we manage to get a rickshaw. There is heavy traffic on the roads and we see trucks, buses loaded with people and all singing praises for the BJP party. Varanasi city was a crazy place that morning.
BJP Party buses headed to rally
We inquire if buses will be plying towards Sarnath because of the rally? To our luck, the rally was in another direction and buses towards Sarnath and Ghazipur were running regularly. We heave a sigh of relief as we reach the bus stand. The buses are state run and in poor condition. We head first to Chandravati where there is a Jain temple. It’s again on the banks of Ganga river and we offer our prayers here. From here, we take a shared rickshaw to Sarnath. Sarnath is primarily a Buddhist town and there are Stupas similar to what we saw in Sanchi and huge statues of Buddha. There is a nice museum maintained by the Archaeological society of India and a Jain temple. We visit all these places during the afternoon and enjoy our time here.
Jain temple, Sarnath
Sarnath Stupas are excavated from the ground and most of them are in broken condition. There is partial restoration work going on mainly to preserve some of the Stupas which have the potential of being destroyed.
Sarnath Stupa in background
Air jump – P
Air jump – K
It’s 5 pm and we head back to Varanasi. We don’t have any grand plans for the evening but we can always make something adhoc. It’s Friday and a new movie night. Today, Dhoom 3 released worldwide and we make plans to watch the evening show in Varanasi. We take an auto rickshaw to JHV cinema house near Varanasi station. At the cinema house, there is a long queue for the tickets but we manage to get hold of 2 tickets for the 6:30 pm show. I won’t give the story away but in a nutshell, Khyati and I enjoyed the movie and it’s worth one watch for Aamir Khan only.
It’s 9:30 pm, we step out of the cinema hall and it’s pitch dark outside. Street lights are either not working or power is out. Either way, using our iPhone torch, we walk towards the railway station and hail an auto rickshaw to our Jain Dharamshala. Tomorrow morning, we have a 10:30 am train for Parasnath.
We call it a night around 11 pm.
It’s Saturday morning 7 am, Khyati and I are ready and hope that our train is on time. Call it our good or bad luck, the train is running 3 hours late and is expected at 1:30 pm. First sign of delay. Well, 3 hours isn’t that bad and we just stay back and relax at the Dharamshala. It’s 9 am and post breakfast, we check the train status again and it’s gone to 4.5 hours delay. We are not having a good feeling about this journey.
If our train was on schedule, we would have left Varanasi at 10:30 am and reached Parasnath at 3:30 pm but now the train itself was going to arrive by 3 pm. We had no choice but to stay in the Dharamshala and follow the train updates.
It’s 1 pm and we have some lunch at the Jain Bhojnalay. The train continues to be delayed and it’s now showing that the train will arrive at 4 pm. Another hour of delay added to our woes.
It’s 2:30 pm and Khyati and I finally carry our bags and head to Mughal Sarai station. Mughal Sarai station is 15 kms east of Varanasi and it takes us an hour to get there. Mughal Sarai station is the largest railway station in the Eastern region. We reach the station by 3:30 pm and patiently wait in the railway waiting rooms. Continuous announcements of delay were proclaimed on the microphone. Our train finally arrived at 6 pm (8 hours delay, phew!!!). The train is crowded and we are in no mood to take this journey anymore. We just want a magical way to get to Parasnath, only if there was one.
train route
Post Mughal Sarai, the train runs on time and we reach Parasnath in 5.5 hours. It’s 11:30 pm and we arrive in Parasnath. We find a Dharamshala near the railway station that late in the night. We are lucky and happy to get a bed to sleep. Today wasn’t one of our best days but it’s all a part of the journey. We accept it and cherish every moment.
From tomorrow, we start a 7 day religious tour of Jain sites in Jharkhand and Bihar states with Sh. Pravin Bhai Lodaya of [Savla and Lodaya group] –
Stay tuned for our future posts…
Best wishes,
Paras