Cambodian Buddhist Monastery, Sarnath

Tucked into the leafy international-monastery circuit of Sarnath, roughly 10 km northeast of Varanasi, the Cambodian Buddhist Monastery is one of the quiet delights of a pilgrimage that most visitors rush past on their way to the Dhamek Stupa.

• Built with donations from Cambodia, the complex renders a slice of Khmer temple aesthetics on the Gangetic plain: tiered roofs, ornamented gables, and stone carving vocabulary that consciously nods to the great temple-mountains of Angkor.
• The approach is half the pleasure — a path through beautifully manicured gardens, clipped hedges and flowering borders that make the grounds feel more like a contemplative park than a roadside shrine.
• Sculptures and relief panels drawn from the Buddha's life are scattered across the lawns, and the whole ensemble is at its most photogenic in the low golden light of late afternoon.
• At the heart of the monastery stands a modest central shrine housing a serene image of Gautama Buddha, around four to four-and-a-half feet tall, its interior walls carrying paintings and statuary that retell episodes from the Buddhist canon.
• Unlike the crowded, ticketed archaeological core of Sarnath, this is a working monastery run in the Cambodian Theravada tradition, so the register here is hushed and devotional rather than touristic.
• Visitors are welcome to step inside, sit quietly, and watch resident monks go about their routines; the atmosphere rewards slow, unhurried attention and makes an ideal spot for a few minutes of meditation between the busier stops on the Sarnath trail.
• Sarnath is one of the four holiest sites in Buddhism — the deer park where the Buddha delivered his first sermon, the Dhammacakkappavattana, setting in motion the Wheel of Dharma.
• Over the twentieth century, Buddhist nations from Thailand and Tibet to Japan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, China, Korea and Cambodia each built a monastery here in their own architectural idiom, turning a single road into an open-air atlas of Buddhist Asia.
• The Cambodian monastery is the Khmer chapter of that story, and pairing it with the neighbouring Thai, Tibetan and Chinese temples in one walk is one of the most rewarding cultural experiences around Varanasi.
• For vegetarian travellers, Sarnath is genuinely easy and reassuring.
• The monastery itself is a place of worship rather than a restaurant, but the surrounding pilgrim quarter along Sarnath's Ashok Marg is dotted with simple satvik thali houses catering to Buddhist and Jain visitors, where you will find wholesome dal, seasonal sabzi, rice and rotis without any meat, egg or onion-garlic if you ask.
• For a wider spread, the pure-vegetarian institutions of Varanasi — from Kashi Chat Bhandar to Ksheer Sagar — are a short drive back towards the city.
• One honest caution: Varanasi is famous for bhang (cannabis) thandai, so at any lassi or thandai stall always ask specifically for a plain, bhang-free lassi before you order.