What Bihar really needs to do on top priority is to discover  its forgotten Buddhist sites and restore them as sites which can be easily visited by the International pilgrims. Among these ' forgotten ruins'  are sites that were visited by the Buddha, while others are of importance during the reign of the Pala kings who established the schools of esoteric Buddhism. Among its places of pride, Bihar is the only State that can boast of having three Buddhist Universities i.e.: Nalanda, Odantapuri and Vikramasila. Of the 3 places of learning, Nalanda is the only one to attract a small portion of the tourists, while the other two remain in oblivion for lack of interest on the part of the Government's to promote the sites. Similarly within the boundaries of Magadh District of the State, only Bodh Gaya, Rajgir and Nalanda are the few places to be advertised in the brochure of the Tourism Department while other sites of importance are ignored and have never been developed into venues of pilgrimage. These sites, though in the remote areas of the district, are  but only a few hours drive from Bodh Gaya, which means that a bus service could be organized that could take the pilgrims to the sites and bring them back to Bodh Gaya - all within a day. In return for such an exercise, you would be able to offer the pilgrim access to the places he/she had always wanted to visit and in return the local people would gain by setting up facilities such as tea shops, develop cottage industries and even entertain the visitors to local cultural shows etc. Such an enterprise would stem the growth of unemployment or the exodus of youth to far off States to earn a livelihood where more often they are exploited rather than paid a just wage.

The Buddhist Heritage Research Foundation will be spending the next two years tracing the history of the sites and up-dating the history of the Buddhist historical sites on this website by constantly updating its reports on the portal as the Peace Pilgrim (Suresh Bhatia) travels from one area to the other often having to walk long distances to reach a site in a remote area just to bring you the situation of the site. In this first part of our research series we will be taking you to the sites that were visited by Siddhartha Gotama after he had renounced a princely life in search of answers to his questions on why people age and eventually die. In this part of the exploration we visited Rampurva, Lauriya Nandangadh, Lauriya Araraj, Kesarya and Vaishali.
  
We are much obliged to Ruchi and Rajesh Dixit of Rangoli Creations, Varanasi, for donating the space for the Web - site and updating it for us whenever required.

We do look forward to the comments and suggestions from you to help us create information that you would like to know about, please write to us: email: pilgrims.buddhistheritage [at] gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Thank you for visiting this portal,

Yours in the Dharma,
Suresh Bhatia
(A Peace Pilgrim)