The Starting Gun

So I discovered there is a mosque in Bodh Gaya, which is somewhat strange because there aren't very many Muslims here. I learned this when I was awakened by the first call to prayer (Fajr). This comes before dawn when the first morning light is visible in the sky. You might wonder why I could have been in town for most of a day without noticing it. But this is not Turkey. Turkey is a civilized country where the traffic is relatively quiet and the calls to prayer are very loud. In India, the calls to prayer aren't very loud, but the traffic certainly is. So, unless you are right next to the mosque, you won't hear the call because the traffic overwhelms it.

Except for the first call, which is so early that it is actually quiet in India at that time. But not for long. In India, the first call to prayer acts as the starting gun for the day. Almost immediately after, the traffic starts to pick up. It's mostly the taxis moving into position in front of the hotels and tourist spots. But the beggars start jockeying for prime begging locations as well.

The call for prayer was helpful for me, as Tamding and I were supposed to leave at 6AM for our tour today. Well, it would have been if Tamding got up too. But he didn't get up until 7AM, and we were worried that we missed our tour. There were two other Tibetans on our tour and we thought they had gone without us. But it turns out they had gone to a Tibetan restaurant for breakfast. They came back to the hotel just as Tamding and I were finishing our breakfast. So, everything worked out fine. And we had a nice tour, which will be described in the next post.