Left Bodh Gaya in thick fog and headed to Nalanda the oldest residential university in the world. Back in the day when Buddha was getting enlightened in around the 5th century BC a huge series of temples and monestaries was constructed as the core of a university to promote Buddhism and learning,

Needless to say at some point around the 12th century the Muslim invaders trashed the place as it was teaching all the wrong things. The site has recently been rediscovered, excavated and in some places restored. In it’s day it housed over 10,000 students and serviced them with full kitchen facilities. Most of the carvings and statues have long since been relocated. Some are in the small museum adjacent to the site.

We drove another 90km to Patna where the Katha Pandaw awaits to take me on down the Ganges to Kolkata. At this stage I just wanted to get on board as my heroic driver Raj who had been coughing an spitting quite a lot had clearly passed on some form of lhurgie and I was starting to feel very flu ridden. Declined a visit to another museum and headed to the ship arriving at about 1430 to discover that all my fellow passengers were stuck on a seriously delayed nightmare of a train journey and would not arrive until much later that evening.

It was a huge relief to have made it and felt like coming home!! Settled into my cabin and had the run of the ship to myself. The lhurgie was worsening so I had an early dinner and decided to retire to my cabin rather than wait for the Gang to arrive. They finally made it at around 22:30 after a gruelling 12 hr train ride. We all met up at breakfast and was pleasantly surprised to see a couple of mates from my Mekong cruise last year.