Bodhgaya.  I left Kolkata on the night train on Wednesday, which was perfectly on time in both departure and arrival.  Nothing I know about India could have prepared me for the peace I would find in Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha
reached Enlightenment under the Bodhi tree 2550 years ago.  The temple
around said tree is serene and filled with flowers and monks and other
pilgrims from all over Asia who've come to meditate where the Buddha
did.  There are also temples here from every Buddhist country.  Let's
see, I visited the Chinese, Taiwanese, and Tibetan (interestingly all
right next to each other in seeming harmony), the Thai, Bhutanese,
Japanese, another Tibetan, the Nepalese, and  Bangladeshi (which was a
total wreck like a big pile of rocks and a friend I met who'd been to Bangladesh
said it was completely appropriate).  The Burmese Temple was closed,
the Vietnamese was too far away, and I couldn't find the Korean or the
Sri Lankan, though they were on my (poor) map.  Each temple is
naturally in the style of its home country, so you get a pretty awesome
comparason  of all the different manifestations of Buddhism, right in
one town.  There are tons of tourists here, but they're mostly monks
and nuns from each of the aforementioned countries.  I liked it so much
here that I stayed an extra day, also because one of the princesses of Thailand
was coming today and there were loads of Thai pilgrims around so I was
interested in that.  I thought I saw the princess at the Mahabodhi
Temple, but someone later told me no, that was some Sri Lankan thing
and the Thai princess came a little later.  I went to meditate at the
Japanese Temple the last 2 nights with all their gongs and chanting and
bells and clappers and quite enjoyed it.

So, tomorrow . . . . Varanasi.   Sounds pretty intense, like all of India rolled into one small city. 
Varanasi
is Hinduism's holiest city, where people go to die and be burned on the
Mother Ganges.  The touts and beggars and scam artists are in full
force, too, but once when talking to some travelers I mentioned
skipping it for the hassle, they said that missing Varanasi would be like missing India.  So stay tuned. . . .