Ruins make great tourist attractions. Ruins of ancient palaces, of forts, temples. But ruins of a university?
As you wander about the red brick remains of Nalanda, you hear not the sound of trotting hooves or the fanfare of a royal court. It’s not power and glory that the ruins evoke but the depth of ancient India’s learning, of a vast campus humming with eager students, monks many of them, learning and engaging with the brightest minds of the land.
There can’t be too many sites like Nalanda across the world, because there weren. . .