Kesaria Stupa

Here, by tradition, the Buddha on his last journey gave his begging bowl to the Licchavis of Vaishali who had followed him, and told them to turn back. A stupa marked the spot by Ashoka's time; the Licchavis enlarged it, and the Gupta and Pala kings built it up tier on tier until it was 150 feet high — taller than Borobudur, which it resembles. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described it in the 7th century.

The stupa was abandoned after the Pala period, lost its top in the 1934 earthquake, and became a jungle-covered hill called Raja Ben ka Deora by the local people. The ASI began clearing it in 1998 and found a stepped terraced monument of brick, with life-size Buddha statues in niches on each of its six surviving tiers.

Kesaria is still half-excavated and all the more striking for it: a man-made brick mountain in a landscape of flat paddy, with trees growing from its upper slopes and stucco Buddhas in the cleared niches below. You can walk round the lower terraces; the view from the road at sunset, with the stupa dark against the sky, is the photograph.

It is on nobody's circuit, which means an hour alone with the largest stupa on earth. Combine it with Vaishali on the way north to Champaran, or with Lauriya Nandangarh and Areraj — the Ashokan pillars of the old royal road — on the way to Valmiki.