The Gandhara Buddhist Trail

Arrive in Islamabad

We meet you at Islamabad International Airport and drive about 35 km to your hotel, which takes under an hour outside the rush hour. The rest of the day is free to recover from the flight. In the evening your guide goes through the plan for the week.

Overnight: Islamabad

Taxila Museum, Dharmarajika and Sirkap

Taxila is about 38 km from central Islamabad, 45 minutes to an hour by road. We start at the Taxila Museum, begun in 1918 and opened in 1928, where about 4,000 objects from the excavations are on show, most of them dating from about 600 BC to 500 AD. The Dharmarajika stupa, about 3 km east of the museum, was rebuilt under the Kushans in the 2nd century CE over an older stupa attributed to the emperor Ashoka. We finish at Sirkap, the city founded by the Greco-Bactrian king Demetrius around 180 BC, where the main street, the Apsidal Temple and the Double-Headed Eagle Stupa can still be walked.

Overnight: Islamabad

Jaulian, Mohra Moradu, Sirsukh and Jandial

A second day at Taxila for the monasteries in the hills east of the museum, about 13 km further on. Jaulian, built in the 2nd century CE, stands on a hill about 100 m above its village and is reached by steps; it has a main stupa ringed by smaller votive stupas and a two-storey monastery with 28 cells on each floor. Mohra Moradu, about 1.5 km from the Kushan city of Sirsukh, has a monastery of 27 rooms around a courtyard and a votive stupa about 4 m high preserved inside one of the cells. On the way back we stop at the Jandial temple, 630 m north of Sirkap's north gate, which has Ionic columns and a Greek plan.

Overnight: Islamabad

Islamabad Museum and the Shah Allah Ditta caves

A short day in the capital. The Islamabad Museum, run by the federal Department of Archaeology and Museums in the Sir Syed Memorial Building on Ataturk Avenue, is small and is open daily from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm. In the afternoon we drive about half an hour to the Shah Allah Ditta caves at the foot of the Margalla Hills, on an old route between Kabul and Taxila, where traces of Buddhist-era murals survive. There is time afterwards for the Faisal Mosque.

Overnight: Islamabad

Mankiala stupa and the Grand Trunk Road to Lahore

We leave Islamabad by the Grand Trunk Road and stop after about 37 km at the Mankiala stupa, which tradition dates to the reign of the Kushan king Kanishka in the 2nd century CE and links to the story of a past life of the Buddha who gave his body to feed starving tiger cubs. The relic deposits found here in 1830 are now in the British Museum. From Mankiala it is about 255 km to Lahore, and the whole day's driving takes 5 to 6 hours with stops.

Overnight: Lahore

The Lahore Museum and departure

The Lahore Museum on the Mall has been in its present building since 1894 and holds one of the main collections of Gandharan sculpture in the country. Its best-known piece is the Fasting Buddha, also called the Fasting Siddhartha: a grey schist figure 84 cm high, dated to the 2nd or 3rd century CE, found at Sikri and given to the museum in 1894. The museum is closed on Fridays and on the first Monday of each month, so we set your dates to avoid them. The airport is about 11 km away, and we drive you there for your flight home.