NEXT STOP: BIHAR
Please alight for:
India’s most densely populated, third most populous and poorest state
the ancient capital of empires
the world’s first residential university
Car 2 is reserved for Gangetic dolphins
Car 3 is for Tibetan monks — mind the yaks.
The Buffet Car will be closed after noon for fasting/
बिहार में आपका स्वागत है – Welcome to Bihar
Bihar (Bih)
बिहार bihār, ‘Monastery’ From Skt/Pali: vihāra, ‘abode’, ‘(Buddhist) monastery’.
The very name “Bihar” reflects its Buddhist heritage. Ancient vihāras once dotted the landscape, from Bodh Gaya to Nalanda to Vikramshila, their ruins still rising from the plains. The word itself travelled far: from Bihar across Central Asia to Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and China, where Buddhist monasteries carried the same name.
Bihar was the cradle of empire: the Mauryas (4th–2nd c. BCE), guided by Chanakya and ruled by Ashoka, spread their authority from Afghanistan to Bengal. The Guptas (3rd–6th c. CE) made it the heart of a “Golden Age,” with advances in astronomy, mathematics, and literature — Aryabhata calculated the length of the solar year, Kalidasa wrote his plays, and Nalanda became the greatest university in Asia.
Today Bihar has around 125 million people, making it India’s third most populous state. With more than 1,000 people per square kilometre, it is the most densely populated. Despite being the poorest state in per capita income, Bihar’s story is one of paradox: it has produced saints and scholars, dynasties and democrats, and it sends millions of migrant workers across India and abroad. Bihari labour fuels construction in Delhi, farming in Punjab, and service industries in Mumbai and the Gulf.
Its politics — from Gandhi’s Champaran satyagraha in 1917 to support indigo workers on 1917 and Jayaprakash Narayan’s protest movement to the rise of leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar — often set the tone for the nation. Bihar is poor in wealth, but rich in legacy.
Bihar often appears in headlines as the country’s poorest state, a place of out-migration and struggle. Yet step off the train and you find something deeper: the memory of empires that ruled from Pataliputra, the chants of pilgrims at Vishnupad or Bodhgaya, and the historic connections with the leaders and pivotal moments in Indian history. Here, poverty and grandeur travel side by side in the same carriage.
The Ganga still defines Bihar: carrying pilgrims to Gaya, linking it to Bodh Gaya and Nalanda, and flowing on towards the Vikramshila Gangetic Dolphin Sanctuary — a 60-kilometre protected stretch that shelters India’s endangered national aquatic animal, threatened by dams, nets, and pollution but still surfacing in the currents like a living emblem of Bihar.
Patna (Bihar)
पटना paṭanā ‘Port’ [Pataligram, Pataliputra, Patalipatnam]. From Dra/Skt: paṭṭanam, ‘city’, ‘port’.
Patna sits at the confluence of four rivers — the Ghaghara, Ganges, Sone, and Gandak — a crossroads of water that made it a natural capital. Its origins lie in Pataliputra, founded in the 5th century BCE by the Magadhan king Ajatashatru. From a riverside village it grew into the seat of the Shishunaga, Nanda, Maurya, Gupta, and Pala empires — a record no other Indian city can match.
By the Maurya period, Pataliputra was among the largest cities in the world. The Greek envoy Megasthenes, who lived here around 300 BCE, described a city 14 kilometres long and 2.5 kilometres wide, enclosed by a wooden palisade with 570 towers and 64 gates. Inside were palaces, barracks, markets, and gardens. From here, Chandragupta Maurya and his strategist Chanakya (Kautilya) forged an empire and wrote the Arthashastra, a foundational text of statecraft. His grandson Ashoka ruled from the same city, issuing rock and pillar edicts that still stand across India and sending Buddhist missions as far as Sri Lanka and Greece.
The Guptas revived Pataliputra as a centre of learning. The astronomer Aryabhata worked nearby, proposing that Earth rotates on its axis. Poets like Kalidasa composed in its courts. Medicine, mathematics, and astronomy flourished in what later generations would call India’s Golden Age.
From the 7th century, the city declined. Invasions, floods, and shifting trade routes led to abandonment; its wooden palisades rotted away, its libraries burned, and all memory of its former splendour faded.
It was reborn in the 16th century, when the Afghan ruler Sher Shah Suri revived it as Patna. Under the Portuguese and later the British, the city became a hub for calico, silk, and saltpetre. The last — vital for gunpowder — made Patna strategically important on a global scale. In the 17th century, merchants from Lisbon to London knew its name.
Patna was sometimes called the “rice bowl of the East”, its granaries feeding armies and empires. In the modern era, Gandhi Maidan became a rallying ground, from the independence struggle to Jayaprakash Narayan’s protests. Its food culture — litti-chokha baked in ashes, sweet khaja pastries, endless cups of chai — keeps old traditions alive in its lanes, alongside mosques, temples, and shrines that give the old quarter a mingled Hindu-Muslim character.
Bihar and the Railways
Bihar is one of India’s great railway states. The East Indian Railway first laid tracks here in the 1860s, linking Patna to Calcutta and reshaping trade. Today Patna Junction is among the busiest stations in the country, while Gaya Junction funnels pilgrims to Bodh Gaya. Barauni, Samastipur, Kiul, and Mokama are classic junctions, carrying freight over the great Ganga bridges at Mokama and Munger.
Bihar also sends more migrant workers across India than any other state, most of them by train. Express departures from Patna, Darbhanga, or Muzaffarpur are famously overcrowded, nicknamed baraat specials. In Bihar, no family is untouched by the railways: trains carry sons and daughters to Delhi, Mumbai, or Punjab, and bring them back each year for Chhath Puja. The Ashoka Express could hardly pass through without homage.
Gaya (Bihar)
गया gaya, ‘Gayasur’s Town’
Gaya takes its name from the demon Gayasur [Skt: असुर asura, ‘demon, spirit’], who after a thousand-year penance won a boon from Vishnu: anyone touching his body would be absolved of sin. When he finally lay down to die, the gods transformed him into the rocky hills around Gaya — Rama Shila, Pret Shila, Ram Gaya Pahar, Brahmayoni, and Mangla Gauri — which still encircle the town. The last is especially sacred to women, who climb its slopes to worship the goddess Gauri for marital happiness and fertility.
For Hindus, Gaya is one of the most important sites for pind-daan, the ancestral rites meant to free departed souls. Families travel from across India to perform rituals on its hills and at the Vishnupad Temple, which enshrines what is said to be the footprint of Vishnu himself. Legends also link Rama and Sita to Gaya during their exile, while the Mahabharata records Yudhishthira performing rites here before the Kurukshetra war.
The city also holds a Jain connection: Mahavira, the 24th Tirthankara, is said to have preached in the area. Over centuries, Buddhist teachers, Hindu saints, and Jain monks all crossed paths here.
Gaya’s pilgrimage economy is sustained by hereditary priests (pandas), who guide visitors through the rituals — sometimes criticised for commercialisation, yet indispensable for many pilgrims.
Today Gaya is both a bustling district HQ and a major railway junction, funnelling pilgrims south to Bodh Gaya. At dawn the Phalgu river fills with offerings: flowers, lamps, and pind-balls of rice pressed into the mud. In monsoon, the river swells against its ghats; in the dry season it shrinks to a sandy bed where rituals continue regardless, proof that faith endures even when the river runs thin.
Sixteen kilometres away lies Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha attained enlightenment beneath the Bodhi tree — but that story belongs to the next part of our journey.
For more on Indian place names and history - see Place Names Wallah
For a journey through tribal India & Sri Lanka see - Headhunting with Marguerite