Chapter 91 farewell to ashoka

The lama who guarded Sakyamuni’s ascetic cave repeatedly told us to leave as soon as possible. We looked at the map and decided to go to another important Buddhist place, now called Patna, the city of Fahrenheit mentioned repeatedly in Buddhist classics. In the time of Sakyamuni, there was already a small kingdom called Bozalizi.King Ashoka designated it as the capital, and for a long time, a series of far-reaching decisions to promote Buddhism were made here.For this reason, both Faxian and Xuanzang also came to visit.Traveling north from Patna, you can enter Nepal.OK, then we'll choose this path.

These days, since we started from New Delhi, the road has been getting harder and harder.It was okay at the beginning, but it started to fail from Jaipur to Agra, and then to Kanpur and Varanasi, and it got worse and worse.Varanasi is almost impossible to go east, and Patna reaches its peak. This time, it is no longer to beware of the presence of international terrorist groups on the border of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, which is currently the most dangerous road in the world, nor is it to worry about the bandits in the southern provinces of Pakistan, but to completely accept a poor society that has not been effectively managed The great chaos and terror that will inevitably spew out.

Twenty-four hours a day, the road is always congested with frenzied torrents.Severely overloaded trucks and buses were full of people standing on the roof, and people were still clinging to the outside of the windows. They honked their horns and tried to pass through, but they were already jammed three floors in and out, and they couldn't move. Sandwiched among these vehicles were donkey carts, bicycles, cattle, tramps, idlers, peddlers, beggars, and naked walkers, all covered in dust. The narrow road was built in unknown years, and it seems that it has just undergone changes in the earth's crust, and there will always be big pits followed by small pits.After walking a few steps, I saw an overturned car with all four wheels in the sky, and turned over all the way, as if I was driving a car expo.But without rescuers and onlookers, everyone has long been tired of watching.

When driving on such a road, one must be fully mentally prepared: it takes more than ten hours to drive out, and there is no place to eat on the way. Everyone is dizzy with hunger, but the most troublesome thing is going to the toilet.Where is there a toilet along the way? In the past, it could be done anywhere in the desert and in the fields, but here is always crowded with people.Only a drop of water did not enter, and occasionally seeing a yellowed corn field in the distance, several ladies and ladies rushed away like crazy. Not only can't eat along the way, but also can't believe the food in the hotel.After Li Hui visited what was said to be the largest dairy factory, he vowed not to take a sip of the milk here again.Most of the team members who only ate in hotels on weekdays had stomach problems, and some still had high fevers.Therefore, the team strictly stipulates that they are only allowed to eat a few things, and even when brushing their teeth in the hotel, they are not allowed to use the tap water here to rinse their mouths, and each person has a small glass of pure water.But the pure water bought here has a lot of floating objects, so I can only look for international brands such as Evian.In the end, there were only two things that the team members could safely eat: boiled eggs with shells and peanuts with shells.

If you drive for more than ten hours, and you have to give way to the daytime visit time, you can only drive at night for most of the time.At night, there are fewer idlers and bicycles, but more overloaded trucks than in the daytime. Most of them have no taillights, and when they drive head-on, they will blind you with bright lights, and often only one is on, so it is impossible to judge whether it is Its left light or right light.Suddenly, a few donkey carts would jump out of the sidewalk. Therefore, the dangers in the meantime were as dense as a cow's hair. Several drivers survived the desert, the sandstorm, and the danger zone, but now they are more nervous than ever.The intercom sounded urgently, and all the people held their breath, opened their eyes wide, soaked in sweat, and watched how the Buddha blessed us to go through new difficulties step by step.

Here, I am once again grateful for the group of partners holding the steering wheel in front of me.Without them, there would be no TV shoot, nor my cultural visit, so their names must be written.Team leader Guo Ying insisted on driving, and sometimes started the car to explore the road, commanded on the walkie-talkie, and made her voice hoarse; another excellent commander was Ma Dali, and most of the tens of thousands of kilometers of roads on our trip were covered by him for one kilometer His assistant Ouyang Shaohui also contributed a lot to the one-kilometer development; Chen Jiyong drove the rear car, not only to check the situation behind the team, but also to monitor the overall status of the team.The No. 4 car I was in was driven by Li Zhaobo, a majestic man who shared life and death day and night with me and forged a deep friendship.The driver of the No. 3 car in front of us is Wang Zheng, a Hong Kong native who can speak authentic Beijing dialect, and makes everyone happy with his cheerful disposition.Besides them, Ya Guoxian and Xie Ying also drove for a long time.

Several girls in our group are good drivers, but it has long been stipulated that they are never allowed to touch the steering wheel. They have no choice but to act as co-pilots, sitting in the front seat next to the driver, and commanding the vehicles behind them with a walkie-talkie .The host of the program, Ms. Li Hui, was in command of cars No. 4 and No. 5 in No. 3 car as soon as she arrived. Her decisive and accurate language immediately allowed people to judge her own driving level.Ms. Liu Xingguang never put down the walkie-talkie on the night when the convoy passed the most dangerous area, and all the dangers on the road ahead were described by her sentence by sentence.Although Ms. Zhao Wei didn't give many orders, she always told the tail car how to drive in a steady and timely manner.As a result, when we arrived at the residence in the middle of the night, everyone was out of breath and staggeringly carrying their luggage.

Arriving in Patna tonight, I can't even drive after entering the city.After finally moving to a hotel, he ate a little and fell on the bed.Just as I was about to close my eyes but couldn't, there were buzzing mosquitoes forming a formation, and I killed more than 20 of them without any hassle. Suddenly one dog barked, and all of them barked. In the end, I believe all the dogs in the city barked. I couldn't sleep at all, so I got up and sat in the dark thinking, the experience of these days is really unforgettable in my life.By the Nile River in Egypt, I already felt that I couldn't do it, but I didn't expect to see Iraq and Iran later.But compared to here, Iran is heaven.No matter how bad Iraq is, at least there are wide and smooth roads to walk on, and clean and hot pancakes to eat, but what you see here are only three extremes: extreme poverty, extreme chaos, and extreme filth.It's hard to believe that this is a man-managed society, and those officials who are lively and elected don't know what they are busy with.

I sincerely hope that what the eye sees are just skins.I also know that India is developing very fast in some fields (such as computer software), and there are many rich people in India.But our own experience tells us that the scene on the street is often more reflective of the life of ordinary people in a society than data and reports.What's more, we didn't deliberately go deep into remote areas this time, but traversed the entire North India, which is known as rich, and faced the famous Ganges Plain. There must be many cultural relics in the capital of King Ashoka, but we are a little scared when we look at the road conditions, I am afraid that it will tarnish the impression of the sacred place.Then I'm sorry, great Ashoka, we have to leave you tomorrow and go to Nepal.

December 23, 1999, Patna, India, overnight at Chanakya Hotel