The Mahabodhi Temple Complex is one of the four holy sites related to the life of the Lord Buddha, and particularly to the attainment of Enlightenment. The first temple was built by Emperor Asoka in the 3rd century B.C., and the present temple dates from the 5th or 6th centuries. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples built entirely in brick, still standing in India, from the late Gupta period.
Bodh Gaya where Buddha attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. This is probably the most important site of our entire pilgrimage and yet there are no photos of us in the Mahabodhi Temple park. There is an incredibly strict security check and no electronic items are allowed. At the first security check, they scanned my small backpack twice and after the iPhone I had to take the power bank and the earphones back to the storage... but somehow I still had an iPhone... I was happy to have a photo but there was another security check in front of the temple and they found it there... I was able to take it back to the storage...
The Mahabodhi Temple park and the temple itself are both a great experience. Just being there and soaking up the peace of the place... you can spend hours, days meditating here next to the temple. A large photo laminated by an in-house photographer was taken, I will scan it because it is so shiny that it is impossible to photograph.
There are many different people in the Mahabodhi temple garden, mostly monks from different parts of the world, we saw many Thai, Korean, Taiwanese, Japanese… monks, the monks’ clothes usually show which country they came from.
Many people sit under the original Bodhi tree for hours or even days and chant mantras, meditate. There are Indian children who try to sell leaves from the original Bodhi tree, although there was not a single orphaned leaf under that tree because if a leaf accidentally fell, someone would immediately pick it up. However, there are also many Mari Bodhi trees in the park and there were plenty of leaves under them that we picked from too. Then there are all kinds of monks who tell the future, bless you, teach you.
When you leave the temple garden, you are immediately attacked by vendors selling laminated original Bodhi tree leaves. There is also serious police protection in front of the temple because the Indian sellers have to be kept under control. The traders are constantly disturbed by the police but they are still there. We walked around the town around the churchyard and it is worth sitting down to eat local food.
