Buddha Purnima Mela, Sarnath

Every spring, on the full-moon night of Vaisakha (April–May), the quiet Buddhist town of Sarnath swells into its single busiest, most joyful day of the year: the Buddha Purnima Mela, also called Buddha Jayanti or Vesak.

• This is the festival that honours the three great moments Buddhist tradition places on the same full moon — the Buddha's birth, his enlightenment and his final passing.
• Sarnath is the fitting stage, for it was here, in the Deer Park beside the towering Dhamek Stupa, that the newly awakened Buddha delivered his very first sermon and set the Wheel of Dharma turning.
• On Buddha Purnima, tens of thousands of pilgrims, monks and travellers from across India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Myanmar, Tibet and beyond converge here for chanting, meditation, Dhamma talks, lantern displays, cultural performances and the distribution of free food, all radiating out from the great red-brick stupa.
• The day's spiritual centrepiece is the relic procession, or Shobha Yatra.
• The Buddha's sacred bodily relics — one recovered from the ancient Gandhara region and gifted to the Maha Bodhi Society in 1956, the other unearthed at Nagarjunakonda in South India and preserved in an inscribed stone casket that vouches for its authenticity — are enshrined at the Mulagandha Kuti Vihara and shown to the public on only two days each year: Buddha Purnima and Kartik Purnima.
• On this morning the relics are placed in a golden casket atop a garlanded, richly caparisoned elephant and carried out in a slow, radiant parade of maroon-robed monks and nuns, horse carriages, lay devotees and schoolchildren chanting hymns, winding from the Vihara through Sarnath's main crossings and back.
• Devotees line the route to bow, offer flowers and catch a glimpse of the relics, an occasion many wait a whole year to witness.
• Beyond the ceremony, the mela is a warm, colourful ground fair — stalls of prayer flags, incense, Buddhist books, toys and sweets spread along the roads, while the monasteries of a dozen nations, each in its own architectural style, throw open their doors.
• Golden-Buddha temples, the Japanese frescoes inside the Mulagandha Kuti Vihara painted by Kosetsu Nosu, and the sapling of the Bodhi tree brought from Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka all draw quiet, reverent queues.
• The atmosphere is festive yet gentle — devotional rather than raucous — a rare Indian fair where the loudest sound is often collective chanting.
• For the vegetarian traveller, Sarnath is a genuinely easy and reassuring place.
• As a Buddhist pilgrim town it is overwhelmingly vegetarian, and on Buddha Purnima the many monasteries and community kitchens serve free vegetarian food (annadaan) to all comers — simple, wholesome khichdi, rice, dal and sabzi offered in the spirit of the day.
• Along Sarnath's Ashok Marg you will find satvik pilgrim thali houses ladling out pure-vegetarian meals, and for something more elaborate the celebrated pure-veg kitchens of central Varanasi — Ksheer Sagar at Sonarpura for rabri and sweets, and Kashi Chat Bhandar at Godowlia for the city's famous chaat — sit about nine to ten kilometres back toward the ghats.
• One honest caution: Varanasi is also famous for bhang (cannabis) thandai and lassi, so if you buy a cooling drink from a roadside stall, always ask specifically for a plain, bhang-free lassi.