Magadh · Middle & Lower Gangetic Plain
The site of the Buddha's enlightenment, with a descendant of the bodhi tree, a temple whose core is Gupta-period, and the Vajrasana slab attributed to Ashoka. A UNESCO World Heritage site, and the single most international place in India — with Thai, Japanese, Bhutanese, Tibetan, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese and Chinese monasteries around it.
Best time: November–February.
The excavated ruins of a monastic university that operated for around seven centuries, with viharas, temples and a scale of brick construction that makes the description "university" credible on sight. A UNESCO World Heritage site since 2016.
Ringed by five hills and the walls of the old Magadhan capital. Griddhakuta, where the Buddha taught; the Saptaparni cave, where the first Buddhist council was held after his death; hot springs still in daily use; and the Jain temples on the ridges above.
The oldest surviving rock-cut caves in India, cut in the third century BCE and dedicated by Ashoka and his grandson to the Ajivika ascetics. The granite interiors are polished to a mirror finish that has never been satisfactorily explained, and they carry an echo that E. M. Forster used as the pivot of A Passage to India.
The centre of the Gaya pind daan rites, built around a footprint in rock, with the dry bed of the Phalgu beside it. During Pitru Paksha the riverbed itself becomes the ritual ground.
Where Mahavira died and was cremated. The Jal Mandir stands in the middle of a lotus tank said to have been formed where earth was taken for his funeral, reached by a long stone causeway.
The shrine of Makhdum Sharfuddin Yahya Maneri, the fourteenth-century Firdausi Sufi whose letters are a classic of Indian Sufi writing. The urs fills the town, and the khanqah has functioned continuously for seven centuries.
Two tombs by the Sone confluence — the Chhoti Dargah of Shah Daulat, completed in 1616, is among the finest Mughal-period buildings in eastern India, with a carved stone ceiling worth the trip on its own.
One of the five takhts of Sikhism, at the birthplace of Guru Gobind Singh in 1666. The gurdwara holds relics of the Guru and draws pilgrims from Punjab and the diaspora year-round.
What is left of Pataliputra — the excavated remains of an eighty-pillared Mauryan hall, wooden palisades preserved in the water table, and a deep well associated in tradition with Ashoka.
Between them they hold the Didarganj Yakshi, a third-century BCE sandstone figure with the Mauryan polish intact, and the best collection of the region's Buddhist and Hindu sculpture.
A stone sun temple with an unusual east-facing orientation, and the site of the largest Chhath gathering in Bihar — several lakh people at one tank over two days.
Excavated monastic sites in the Nalanda hinterland, less visited and less reconstructed — brick viharas and stupas standing in fields.
Sulphur springs on Vaibhara hill used continuously since at least the Buddha's lifetime, and a hill-ringed lake with a Buddha statue, reached on foot or by tonga.
Places worth visiting in Magadh — heritage sites, wildlife, pilgrimage and landscape, with the best time to go. (14)