Buxar

Buxar's pre-history is the Ramayana. Vishwamitra brought the young Rama and Lakshmana here to guard his sacrifice from demons, and the killing of Tadka — remembered by a ten-metre statue on the river road and the Ramrekha Ghat where Rama bathed — is why the Kartik Purnima mela on these ghats is one of Bihar's oldest. Charitravan and Nath Baba's shrine mark the ashram sites; the ghats at dusk, with the river wide and empty, are the reason to come.

Twice the town turned history. At Chausa, 15 km west, Sher Shah Suri ambushed the Mughal emperor Humayun in 1539; Humayun escaped by swimming the Ganga on a water-carrier's inflated skin. At Katkauli on the town's edge, in October 1764, Hector Munro's Company army beat the combined forces of the Nawab of Awadh, the Nawab of Bengal and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II — the battle that gave the Company the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha a year later at Allahabad. A small memorial stands on the field.

Buxar Fort, the earthen ramparts of Raja Rudra Singh's 1054 stronghold, encloses part of the old town; Brahmpur's Brahmeshwar Nath temple, 25 km east, fills at Shivaratri. The Jain bronze hoard dug up at Chausa in 1931 is now in Patna Museum — go and see it afterwards.