By Lee Kim Chew

THIS is a rail journey for the soul and it starts with a hint of redemption at Delhi's Safdarjung Station in the heart of the throbbing Indian capital.

The Mahaparinirvan Express, also known as the Buddhist Circuit Train, is just one of 15,000 trips that Indian Railways makes every day on its congested tracks. But the ochre train is something special. It carries a load of religiosity layered with ancient Buddhist history, legends and traditions.

Thai Buddhists seeking refuge under the sacred bodhi tree in Mahabodhi Temple. (Photo: Lee Kim Chew)

As it rolls eastwards on a long pilgrimage by rail and road to Buddhism's holiest sites, spiritualism takes over. It's supposed to. A journey in the footsteps of Lord Buddha is an exercise in mindfulness, a quest for inner peace and awakening.

But reality is a harsh teacher and the plight of the downtrodden unsettles.

From start to finish, the route through Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, and Bihar, its poorest, opens a window to an unvarnished India where poverty and deprivation stalk like a shadow. The world is full of suffering, the sutras say.

The first stop after travelling almost a thousand kilometres overnight is Bodhgaya, the spiritual home of Buddhists. Here is the famous Mahabodhi Temple, the holiest of Buddhist shrines, whose sandstone roof soars high into the sky and its pinnacle marks Buddha's enlightenment.

The temple houses Buddha's statue, resplendent in gold. In the leafy courtyard are a granite block engraved with his footprints, weathered stupas, bronze bells and ornate stone sculptures. Under a bodhi tree where the Buddha achieved enlightenment, devotees seek refuge in its shade.

Buddhism's sacred sites in India have temples and monasteries from many Buddhist nations that enrich its spiritual diversity. Between the Hindus and Buddhists, there's no disharmony in a country where religious passions are easily ignited, often with dreadful consequences.

Outside Mahabodhi Temple, a muezzin calls the faithful for prayers in the mosque down the street. Not far away sits a colossal statue of an unwavering, imperturbable and meditating Buddha built by the Japanese Daijokyo sect in Nagoya.

The Buddha in repose at the Mahaparinirvana Temple in Kushinagar, where he died. (Photo: Lee Kim Chew)

But Buddhism, supplanted by Hinduism and Islam, never spread its roots in the land of its origin. Less than 1 per cent of India's 1.2 billion population, mostly from the lowest caste, embraces Buddhism.

From Bodhgaya to Rajgir 85km away, the tour bus fights for space with speeding trucks and ambling cows as it hurtles to the ancient Buddhist sites. The rural roads are a long way from the Golden Quadrilateral, a spanking new national expressway that heralds a rising India.

Buddha's cremation site at the Ramabhar Stupa. (Photo: Lee Kim Chew)

Buddhism preaches moderation but there's nothing moderate in the way Indian drivers blare their horns. Blasting out loud is the common street language when sacred cows have right of way and long-suffering truckers invite tailgaters to 'blow your horn'.

It is masochistic fun when the bus trip turns into a rodeo ride each time the pilgrims get roughed up on bad roads in a detour because of a broken bridge or some other impediments.

But the journey grinds on.

The trudge up Gridhrakuta Hill, where Buddha delivered the Lotus Sutra 2,500 years ago, burns off karmic energy in the blazing sun but those who persist get amply rewarded. The lush green hills, gentle breeze and quiet moment at a shrine on Vulture Peak have an eternity about them. Two caves on the hill, said to be the abode of ancient monks, deepen the spirituality. The ruins of Nalanda, a renowned monastic university founded in the 5th century AD and now a World Heritage site, are not far from here.

The pilgrim tourists are on the move all the time, by train at night and by bus in the day. Herded at commercial speed along a pre-planned route that offers fleeting glimpses of antiquity, all things pass with no pause to see the universe in Buddha's alms bowl. Nothing is permanent.

Next station Varanasi, a sacred Hindu city by the Ganges. On the riverbank, the funeral pyres light up the evening sky in one of the ancient city's great cremation sites. The fires at the pyres never go out, the guide says, because there are bodies to burn all the time.

Upstream, Hindu holy men pay tribute to the gods of the Ganges at dusk in a ritual of lights.

With practised hands, they swing lamps and smoking incense to the beat of drums and bells. In the miasma on a moonless night, we watch the Arti ceremony from a boat.

Agra is an incongruous stopover but it adds colour to a venerable pilgrimage. (Photo: Lee Kim Chew)

The life-giving Ganges is celebrated as the stench of burning flesh from the cremation grounds wafts in the air, and two scavenging dogs, oblivious to everything, tear into a bloated carcass on the riverbank. The surrealism conjures life, suffering and death in a perpetual cycle as the Hindu and Buddhist cosmoses overlap in karma and rebirth.

In Sarnath, where the Buddha preached his first sermon in Deer Park, the Mauryan emperor Ashoka built Dhamekh Stupa, a 33m-high cylindrical tower that now stands on an archaeological site. Devotees chant mantras and tread its path with reverence. In Sarnath museum, great stone works of Buddhist inspiration and remnants of finely carved lintels tell the story of Buddha's life.

From Gorakhpur to Kushinagar, the pilgrims' progress is slowed by yet another bone-rattling ride on roads washed out by the monsoon rains. Shaken but not their faith, they plod on to the place where Buddha died.

The Mahaparinirvana Temple has a 6mlong statue of the Buddha in repose. The hush in the hallowed hall calms the body and mind. Buddha's cremation site at the Ramabhar Stupa is a short distance away.

As the sutras recount, Buddha was born in Lumbini on a full moon day in 566BC. Today in Nepal near the Indian border, a squat red building protects the ancient brick ruins of his birthplace. A stone slab shows the exact spot of Prince Siddhartha Gautama's birth. Legend has it that the heavens were filled with light when he was born.

On the M Express, the spiritual journey ends in Sravasti, where Buddha stayed many times in his wanderings over 45 years to spread his teachings.

Thai devotees make merit by building a stately temple, prayer hall and monastic complex here. Even from afar, Thailand's gigantic statue of a golden Buddha on the wide Gangetic plains is a magnificent sight.

The 52m-high sandstone Mahabodhi Temple in Bodhgaya is the holiest of Buddhist shrines. (Photo: Lee Kim Chew)

The penultimate station Agra is an incongruous stop on a venerable pilgrimage.

But the Taj Mahal, a marble monument that celebrates worldly love, is India's brand ambassador, not a distraction, and it is thrown in the pilgrim's package to draw tourists. From now on, the spiritual gives way to things temporal.

If pilgrim demand drives the Buddhist train, the Indian government rides gleefully on it. The new temples built by devotees around the world on Buddhism's sacred grounds spur Indian tourism.

They help to spin the Dharma Wheel in a locomotive that links the spiritual with earthly business.

The M Express operates only in the winter months, from October to February, when the temperature is in the mid-thirties.

The summer months are too hot.

Sold as an exclusive and comfortable tour, the Buddhist train is hardly ascetic.

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation pampers the passengers with courteous service, clean bunks and cozy hotels, despite the lack of first-class facilities.

A pilgrimage that clocks 3,500km to 13 cities in eight days and traverses an expanse with some 1,000 villages packs in plenty. Less is more in Buddhism but worldly values prevail in a whistle-stop tour that jolts rather than stills the mind.

Buddhism teaches total detachment and shedding all desires to achieve Nirvana.

For lesser mortals who do not reach this state of sublimity, there's a touch of spirituality in a journey that attracts the devout, the inspired and the curious.

As the Buddhist Circuit Train returns to Delhi's Safdarjung station where the pilgrimage began, it completes a round to discharge an edified load, its tenth this time. Then it reincarnates again. Like a circle in a spiral, it ends one cycle only to begin yet another.

The writer's trip was organised by India Tourism (www.incredibleindia.org).

This article was first published in The Straits Times Special. It is produced by the Special Projects Unit, Marketing Division, SPH.