It was a long-running plan in my mind that i wanted to visit Takht-i-Bahi. This place is an ancient Buddhist monastery in Mardan city,KPK province of Pakistan.
The journey before reaching the destination was a bit tiring as i was feeling deprived of my sleep, that is very dear to me. I was kind of dozing on the bus. After the bus, we took a ride of tuk-tuk to reach the focal point of the tour.
But, as soon as I found myself standing in front of ancient archeological sites, which was considered among the most important sites in Buddhism, my eyes were wide open with astonishment.
I was bewildered by the architecture and preservation of Buddhist monastery. It was an exceptionally amazing feel to step inside the site. Further, I found that ;
In 1980, Takht-i-Bahi was listed as a World Heritage Site and described as "exceptionally well-preserved".
I found it true once i made a tour of Takht-i-Bahi.
I almost flied in the air after witnessing my dream destination in reality.
In my mind, I was connecting dots. Last year, I visited Peshawar Gandhara Museum, Lahore Museum, and Taxila city, where i came across many Buddhist monasteries, ruins, and statues of Buddha that are well preserved in museums. But, this time;
It was totally different. Even for many brief minutes, I just kept thinking that i am in a foreign country and it's not Pakistan. The only thing that was reminding me that I am in Pakistan were other tourists who were local to area.
Sunlight was very pleasant to the moment, and it was complementary that day.
I assume tourists who came here used to carve their names. Passing by the main stupa area, I saw some other sign boards.
On other sign boards, it reads; Main Assembly Hall, Main Stupa, and other many stupas courts. It was sort of confusing to me to choose one direction as i want to explore every dimension of this multidimensional architectural ancient marvel.
It was surrounded by mountains of same brown colors as it has rocks that are used in the construction of the whole Buddhist monastic complex.
Probably, small statues of Buddha used to sit here but now those statues are moved to some local and to British Museums.
Basit, my companion in this journey, was always ahead of me. He is local to this province and he knows the Pashto language that's why we always got advantage of the Pashto language everywhere. I have noticed this one prominent thing in Pashtoon culture that their kinship ties are extremely strong. They are connected and knitted really well in the social fabric of the society.
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We reached the height and got nice Ariel view of the complex. It's not the complete view. To our astonishment, we found that complex is really vast and big that we cannot explore it completely in one day. There are so many dimensions that are even unexplored by the archeologists.
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I tried again to jump in the air but Basit isn't a good photographer 😂.
There were many facts about the Buddhist complex that it was constructed under four different distinctive period starting from 1Century to 7 Century.
I really wanted to explore the unexplored areas of the Takht-i-Bahi complex, but I couldn't make it as it was time to travel back.
But, surely this tour was one of the most special tour of my life.
See you another time with another travel story ❤️.