S2E4 - Journey to India: The Ruins of Nalanda Temple

A single note from Australia landed in our inbox and knocked something loose: the reminder that stories travel farther than we do. From there we head straight into the noise and grit of Bodh Gaya at peak crowd, then break away to chase a ruin that once held the world’s attention. What looks like scattered red bricks in a field turns out to be Nalanda, a 5th-century university that welcomed students from India, Tibet, China, Korea, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Persia to study Buddhism, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, grammar, logic, and literature. It wasn’t myth or metaphor—this was a real campus with dorms, aqueducts, lecture halls, and an admissions process that demanded fierce debate and long days.

We untangle popular fiction from the historical record around Xuanzang, the monk immortalized in Journey to the West. No shapeshifting bodyguard, no pig disciple—just a determined scholar who risked everything to reach Nalanda and carry knowledge home. A local “professor” shows us the scale: the remains of ten temples, eight compounds, and the footprint of a library said to hold millions of manuscripts. The legend that its fire burned for months isn’t the point; the point is loss—centuries of science, philosophy, and art reduced to smoke during a 12th-century invasion. Standing in the cell where Xuanzang is said to have meditated, we sit with the ache of what vanished and the stubborn beauty of what remains.

Along the way we talk candidly about street-level poverty, organized begging rings, and safer ways to practice compassion while traveling. We share small, practical tips for navigating chaotic spaces, plus one absurd image we can’t unsee: a carousel spinning so fast it felt like a turbine. The road turns next toward Vulture’s Peak, but Nalanda leaves a charge we carry forward—protect libraries, defend archives, and keep exchange alive across borders. If the story moved you, tap follow, share it with a friend who loves history and travel, and leave a review with one question you want us to explore at Vulture’s Peak.

Mini Goldendoodle puppies
Mini goldendoodle puppies for sale.

Please contact me at theunclewong@gmail.com

Transcript

A First Fan Mail And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, what's up everyone? Welcome back to Asian Uncle. I'm your host, Uncle Wong. It is now November 10th, 2025, Monday. And the reason why I bring that up is because we got our first fan mail today. So I didn't know what that was until I read it carefully. It's from a friend, one of our listeners in Australia. And it simply reads, Thanks for the interesting stories. And I want to thank him or her because by the time you hear this episode, it'll be several months from now. And we didn't forget about you. I also showed this to my editor. He was very happy. And this simple act of appreciation definitely motivates us to do a better job at what we do. So again, thank you. You'll also learn later from the episodes about my experiences that I'm not doing this for the money or the fame. I don't give a shit about that. I simply enjoy doing this, sharing my experiences in hopes that you get something out of it. So please, during your spare time, feel free to drop us a mail. Tell us where I can improve, regardless of what it might be. Like, hey, Uncle Wong, your your sound system sucks. Please speak slower. I'll make the episodes longer, shorter. What interests you? Anything at all. It could even be hate mail. You could even vent. It doesn't really matter. Let me know how you feel. And also I remember when I first started podcasting. Because solo podcasting is a little bit different. I don't have like a partner next to me who can or interview, you know, like it's just a partner next to me. So it makes this interaction a bit more lonely. Because the hardest part is I don't know who the hell I'm talking to. Like I'm literally sitting in my office right now, just chilling with a cup of tea, staring at a computer, talking to a microphone. Alone. Like my dog's outside. I'm just alone by myself. But getting fan mails makes me feel that I'm actually talking to somebody. It's different. And it feels much better. I also realize that 67% of our listeners are from the US. And it's honestly hard living here. A lot of you might not have the luxury of being able to travel to all these places that I'm going to mention. Or don't even have the time to research some of this stuff. So in the future episodes, if you haven't noticed already, I'm going to add a lot of historical elements about the places I've been, about my experiences, and kind of fit into like a geographical timeline for you all. So you can learn a bit about history as well. Now let me know if you like it. So, anyways, back to our story. My friends, my wife, we couldn't stay at the ceremony site anymore. There were just way too many damn people. Everywhere you went, it was just shoulder to shoulder, the person next to you. Except when you went into the temple. But we couldn't stay there the entire day, right? So the streets, the restaurants, the hotels, everywhere was just filled with people. It was dirty. And it stunk. The stench was like no other. And so we wanted to do a little bit more exploring. We made the mistake of going to Damashala the first time and having the let's be safe and not explore too much mindset. But for me, I'm a little crazy when I travel. I've been to so many places. Tourist spots, of course. But every time I go to these tourist spots, I always try to go out of my way to visit spots that are more isolated, that you wouldn't want to see. Normal people would not want to see. I even visited some of the poorest towns in Cambodia near the Mekong River. That was just like insane. For the first time in my life, I saw a kid pop out of a puddle on the street. I was like, oh shit, I swear to God, just a puddle, a mud puddle on the street, a kid just popped out of nowhere. He was having fun too. And so it really gives you a glimpse of or at least appreciate how you live now. Right? You have the luxury of having a job, wife and kids at home, husband at home, you're listening to this podcast, pondering life, just chilling. I'd learn real quick that my worries are just first-world problems. Especially the places that I've been. Uh as in especially the places that I've traveled to. And so for instance, you will learn little tricks here and there. Like I learned really quick going to India, especially these poor places, that you should not give money to the beggars. It's not because I lack empathy or compassion, it's just because if you do, they'll gang up on you. And normally these beggars are kids. It is a I think it's become a system there, much like China, where a gang would control these kids, you know, purposely mutilate them so you would feel bad and give them money. So a lot of these kids have quotas. And a couple of monks told me this too, that these kids have quotas that they must hand in a certain amount of money to their handlers every day. Otherwise, they will either starve or get beat. But by you giving them money, it also doesn't help the cause. And sometimes it can put you in danger. So, for instance, once I saw this kid, his arm was bent backwards, just completely mutilated. He looked like a spider crawling on the ground. It was a horrible sight to see. I even took a picture of it just to remind myself that I should really appreciate life. I gave him some money. And almost immediately I was swarmed by a bunch of kids, small kids, teenage kids, no adults. Started asking me for money. So I gave him a couple rupees here and there. And I just saw more and more kids gang up on me. I started getting upset because it started picking my pockets too. I pushed him away, added real quick, don't do that again. Especially for you ladies, if you travel to India, you have to be careful where you go. Not just India, but any places that are not tourist spots that could be seen as unsafe. Because the world is fucked up. I'll share later on about the Southeast Asian countries and how they operate in the places I've gone to. And being in Putgaya, it didn't seem like the locals were very welcoming. Everybody there was just trying to make a buck off of you. That one time of year thing. And so we decided to go out, go out of our way to two destinations that are really famous. And they're not spots that you would normally go to specifically during a vacation or a travel. So there's no other better time than to visit these places because you'll probably never go there again. And so because it was so damn packed at the ceremony site, cars were not allowed in. Or at least it was very hard to drive a car in. So we booked the van, but the van was waiting for us in town some like 15-20 minutes out. 15-20 minutes, not by foot, but by um a buggy. I'm not even sure if you call it a buggy. It was more like a motorcycle with an attached trailer. A little bit shaky, and had a plastic covering and two rows of seats, enough to maybe sit six to eight. The ride was cheap as hell. It was like 25 cents from the temple to the city or the town where our car was waiting. And so I paid him 50 cents. I think I paid him double to take us around town a bit more. So we're still early for our trip. I wanted to see more of how the other side lives. And so we passed by their marketplace, we passed by their schools, and we passed by where they live. The residential area. And trips like these really make you appreciate your own life. So if you're ever feeling sad about your own, try going to these places. You'll feel good real fast. India's poverty is really truly uncomparable. I've seen some bad places. Like Cambodia, Laos, Miramar. Even some place in the Philippines. And it I guess it these places share a commonality where it's just not only poor, but it's very crowded. It's not like Tibet. They're poor too, but they have a lot of spacing. With too many people gathered in one place, everything turns south from there. I don't even remember seeing places like this in China anymore. I saw it in the 80s and the 90s, but not the past couple of years, you know what I mean? And it feels that parts of India are so underdeveloped behind, let's say, the benchmark. Let's say we use China as a benchmark. Country size, population, etc., etc. That they don't even speak the same, they don't have a unif they don't even have a universal language between a lot of the towns. Many dialects, different customs. The infrastructure for the roads are horrible. I did not see one cement road leaving the airport in the entire two weeks I was there until I bit got to the sites. Even the sites were dirt roads. There were vendors everywhere. Dirty, beggars, monkeys. So once we got to the van, we booked a driver that could speak some English, which was very helpful. It was a very long drive to our first destination. And that was to the great temple of Nalanda. So you can see the temple picture, an aerial shot of the picture for this episode cover page. It doesn't look like much, right? Just some red ruined stones placed in different parts of a park. It would have no significance if you just saw a picture or just passed by it. But if you knew the story behind it, you would be amazed. Most definitely know the famous novel. Xi Ojik, Journey to the West, The Monkey King, Wukong, Ring the Bell. And if you don't know, it's just a story about a monk named Shenzhen, who left the capital city of Tang'an lavishly, not according to history. He was accompanied by a white horse, which he rode, a monkey that can beat the shit out of anyone, and turn into anything, a pig, another crazy monk that does most of the mule work. He carries all their luggage. Anyways, this story wasn't actually like that. Okay, the story you read in the novel, that's fiction. So this high monk Shenzheng, he didn't leave with animals, he didn't leave with this group of people. And instead, he smuggled himself, right? He illegally trafficked himself across the borders to try to go to India. His final destination was here. The Temple of Nalanda. Being a Chinese from my generation and uncle, we grew up watching that tacky TV show, Journey to the West COG. If you guys are my age, you know what I'm talking about. So I had to see it for myself. Compare fiction and nonfiction. And so when we arrived there, some, I think, five, six hours later, it was a long drive. Got to see more of the countryside. You can see the place was again crowded with people, just yelling. And there were motorcycles churning everywhere, a bunch of nasty food stands along the entrance. And then an old man approached me. Surprisingly, he spoke fluent English. He told me he's a professor, and that he could give us a complete tour guide of the area for, I think,$2. And so I gladly accepted. Regardless of his credential. And as a token of appreciation, he got us through the back door where we didn't have to pay an entrance fee. And we had to wait in line. I don't even think there was a line. There wasn't that many people trying to get in there. So when we got in, we walked towards the middle, and I looked up. The place was huge. It's nothing like what you see in the picture. It just makes it look minuscule. And walking around the corridors, seeing even the sewerage system, you can feel how grand this place once was. A bit of a backdrop. This place was built in the 5th century. Okay, comparatively, that's a hundred years before the Tang Dynasty was founded, and around the same time when the Roman Empire was falling. Tibet Buddhism at the time had not been founded yet. This is how long ago it was. Well, see, this is a subject really worth going in depth, because not many people have heard of this place, except for the locals. Have you? But the temple in Nalanda had such great significance and is forgotten in history that I think it's a shame. Because many think it's just a temple, it's just a monastery. Because from the pictures, you can't really see much. It just looks like a bunch of red bricks, and it looked like pretty primitive buildings unless you were there to see what they've built. Mind you, this was structure was destroyed and burnt down. It wasn't discovered until I think 19th century, when they unearthed it and discovered it. It wasn't until maybe like a hundred years later that they restore it enough where tourists can go through. But when you walk through, you would be surprised at the sheer size of this campus. Why do I call it a campus? Because there was not just one temple, there were ten. Eight separate compounds. And at its peak, it can house 10,000 students and 2,000 staff and teachers. It was an architectural marvel. And they all studied here, living together in this enormous brick complex. The land area was around less than fifty acres, which is massive. Again, you can't really tell from the picture. And you would think that the subjects they teach was just Buddhism or philosophy. No. The subjects taught they're remarkable for their time. The subjects taught there were remarkable for their time. Not just Buddhism, but mathematics, literature, astronomy, medicine, logic, grammar, linguistics. Right? Think of it as the Oxford and Harvard of the ancient world, the real ancient world. Centuries before this concept even existed. And the Landa wasn't just Indian, it was truly international. Students from all over came to teach and learn, including Tibet, China, Korea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and even Persia. It was a multicultural exchange. It was just like a real, live, live, like modernized college. Of course, it wasn't that easy to get there. As you can tell, there were stories written on how Shenzhen took so long to get there. And talking about Shenzhen, he wrote, he spent years in Elanda, around the 7th century. And then he wrote detailed accounts of the curriculum, including the architecture and the rigorous academic debates. And according to him, you not only have to pass a written test, but you also had to pass a kind of interview, an oral examination, just to gain admissions. Much like what we see now. And once you were admitted, you study from dawn to dusk, like 12, 14 hours a day. And as I walked around with that so-called professor giving us the tour, telling us about how the water structure was, or the aqueduct, how it flowed through, how the bathrooms worked. It was simply amazing. But one of their most impressive features had to be the library. It was known as the Dharma Ganja or the Mountain of Truth, I believe. And it is said to have housed around 9 million books. There's not actual accounts of it because it was all burnt down. And legend has it that it took three to six months for this library to be burned down, given the sheer amount of knowledge and books that was contained inside. And they all have very poetic names. Sea of Jewels, Ocean of Gems, decorated with jewels. These are direct translations. A lot of them were written on palm leaves, and it covered all topics from medicine, again to logic, literature, astronomy. The knowledge of the knowledge of the ancient people. All gone. He said tragically, the Nalanda's He said tragically Nalanda's golden age ended around the 12th century. It was then a Turkish general by the name of Baktiyar Kilji. I probably totally destroyed that name. But he invaded and set fire to the entire complex, looted, ransacked, and killed off everybody that was there. And like mentioned before, the books fueled a fire. Centuries worth of manuscripts was used as logs to burn. With this destruction, countless ancient works, science, logic, everything lost forever. This was a place where learning was sacred. And archaeolog and even today, as archaeologists continue to uncover the remains, you can see the staircases, the water system, the monasteries, how how advanced everything was. Much comparable to the Romans of the time. But this their legacy should still shape us on how we view education, exchange, and perhaps like human curiosity, for example. And this temple, what they did and its contribution should not be forgotten. That's why I'm bringing this up, and that's why I'm going so much in depth. Because it reminds us also that long before this modern age, long before what we have now, Asia already had a center of learning that connected the entire ancient world. And that's pretty much the background story of the monastery, the temple itself. And so one of the places that I really wanted to go was Shenzhen monk's room. And so the Torah guy led us to exactly where his room was. The walls were almost gone and the roof wasn't there anymore. But in the corner there was a small hole, like enough to fit one person. And it said that Tang Sen or Shenzhen meditated there for years. And so I crawled inside and I sat in that small hole too. That small hole was only big enough to fit perhaps one and a half to two people. And I started meditating. Feeling the past maybe. So I left there shortly afterwards. Um I'll try to upload some of these pictures, including me meditating in that hole. It was pretty cool. But I left it quite upset. I couldn't stop thinking about those words that the tourist that the sorry tour guy kept saying. All gone. Burned. Tragedies like this existed since the beginning of time. This happened all the time in China. We can go on and on about the history of each dynasty destroying the previous one. And that's what us humans are best at. War and destruction to fulfill our desires. So this marked the early spread of Muslim political power in India. A very important turning point in their history and culture. And just as important, Hinduism and Buddhism also clashed. Hinduism did something very smart. They assimilated Buddhism into their religion. And thus, with the destruction of Nalanda, it also pushed out that tradition. So again, this was a very important turning point. And uh I hope you learned something from this. This is probably one of the first times I ever went this deep into a specific topic. But yeah, we didn't leave right away. We did some touring. Of course, we were still very heavy-hearted thinking about the destruction that had happened. I think anybody would. But something funny, because as we left, we jumped in the car to our second destination, we passed by this merry-girl round. You all know what that is, right? When you see it at the amusement parks. So except this one was maybe smaller in size. At first, nothing seemed wrong until you look closer. And my wife was just cracking up. It was so funny. Because that merry-girl round was going fast as shit. Okay, it was spinning like a turbine. It was not supposed to be going that fast. But we were too far to see if people are getting flung out of there. I don't know. Because I have a video of it too. I have to find a way to upload some of these for you guys to see. It's just so funny. Because if you saw it, it would just be like, oh my God. Nothing was. It felt like when you were in India, everything that was abnormal to you in the real life seemed normal there. You have to really experience it to feel it. But, anyways, our next destination was not as educational, but more physical. It also left a um, it also left a very deep impact on me. So let's re-record that. So our next destination wasn't as educational as it was, uh, I think it was more physical because it was high up in the mountains. We had to walk up and down. It took many hours. But it was quite the experience. That's all the time we have for today. I think we are way past our schedule. I'm so sorry. But uh again, I hope you learned something from this and hope you have a great rest of your week. Please join us next time for part two as we explore Vulture's Peak. Uncle Wong signing off. Peace.