Places

VikramshilaHeritageBhagalpur

The excavated remains of the Pala monastic university founded around the eighth century — a vast cruciform stupa surrounded by monastic cells, second only to Nalanda in its time and destroyed at the end of the twelfth century. Almost empty of visitors.

Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin SanctuaryWildlifeBhagalpur

A sixty-kilometre stretch of the Ganga between Sultanganj and Kahalgaon, the only protected area in India designated for the Gangetic dolphin. Boats go out from Sultanganj; the animals are blind and hunt by sonar.

Best time: November–March.

Champanagar and ChampapuriPilgrimageBhagalpur

The traditional capital of Anga, and a major Jain tirtha as the birthplace of Vasupujya, the twelfth tirthankara — the only tirthankara born in this region.

Sultanganj and the Ajgaibinath templePilgrimageBhagalpur

A rock temple in the Ganga where pilgrims fill their water pots before setting out for Deoghar. In Sawan the town runs day and night and the road out of it becomes a single moving column.

Baidyanath Dham, DeogharPilgrimageDeoghar (Jharkhand)

One of the twelve jyotirlingas and the destination of the Shravani Mela — the endpoint of the 105-km barefoot walk from Sultanganj, and among the largest pilgrimages anywhere in the world by number of participants.

Mandar HillPilgrimageBanka

A granite hill identified in tradition as the churning-stick of the ocean of milk, with a spiral groove around it read as the mark of the serpent rope. Jain and Hindu shrines on the summit, and a large Makar Sankranti fair at the Papharni tank below.

Munger Fort and the Bihar School of YogaHeritageMunger

A river fort with Mir Qasim's brief capital inside it, and, in the same town, the Bihar School of Yoga founded in 1964 — one of the institutions through which modern postural yoga was systematised and exported worldwide.

Kahalgaon and Bateshwar SthanPilgrimageBhagalpur

Rock outcrops and ghats on the Ganga near Vikramshila, with an old Shiva shrine and a river view that explains why the monastery was sited where it was.

Lachhuar and the Jamui Jain sitesPilgrimageJamui

Kshatriyakund at Lachhuar, held by the Digambara tradition to be Mahavira's birthplace, with an old temple complex in a quiet valley.

Purnia and Renu's countryHeritagePurnia

The landscape of Maila Anchal — Aurahi Hingna, Renu's village, and the wetland and maize country he made the subject of the first regional novel in Hindi.

The Kishanganj tea gardensNatureKishanganj

Bihar's only tea belt, grown on smallholdings in the narrow neck between Nepal and Bengal, with small factories processing leaf from hundreds of farmers.

Kursela and the Kosi confluenceNatureKatihar

Where the Kosi finally reaches the Ganga after crossing the whole of north Bihar — a vast, shifting expanse of sand, water and diara cultivation.

Manihari GhatUrbanKatihar

A working Ganga ferry crossing to the Sahibganj side, with a long history as a river port and a good place to see the river as a road rather than a boundary.