The Buddhist Circuit: Sarnath to Bodhgaya

Four sites, two states and roughly six hundred kilometres of driving. The Buddhist circuit is the most rewarding route we run and the easiest one to plan badly, because the distances look shorter on a map than they feel in a vehicle.

Done properly it is six days. Done in four it becomes a driving holiday with brief stops at monuments, which is what most rushed itineraries quietly are.

Sarnath: the first sermon

Ten kilometres from Varanasi and usually treated as a half-day add-on, which undersells it. The Dhamek Stupa marks where the Buddha taught the first five disciples, and the museum next door holds the Ashokan lion capital that became the national emblem. Go mid-morning when the deer park is still quiet.

Bodhgaya: the tree

A five to six hour drive from Varanasi and the reason the whole circuit exists. The Mahabodhi Temple sits beside a descendant of the tree the Buddha sat under, and the atmosphere depends entirely on the hour - at dawn it is monks and silence, by midday it is buses. We always plan two nights so you get one proper morning.

Rajgir and Nalanda

Rajgir has the hot springs, the Vulture Peak where the Buddha taught, and a ropeway to the Vishwa Shanti Stupa that saves a hard climb. Nalanda, forty minutes on, is the ruin of a university that ran for seven hundred years and held nine million manuscripts before it was burned. Give it a guide - without one it is red brick and no story.

• Varanasi to Bodhgaya: about 250 km, five to six hours
• Bodhgaya to Rajgir: about 75 km, two hours
• Rajgir to Nalanda: about 15 km, forty minutes
• Nalanda back to Varanasi: about 290 km, six hours
• Total: six days is comfortable, five is tight, four is a mistake