Bodh Gaya, India -- The main hall of the Gaya train station looks like a morgue. It's a wintry morning and bodies lie everywhere in white shrouds, black blankets or red bedsheets.

Foreign tourists heading for the Tripitaka festival attended by Buddhist monks from 54 countries, emerge from trains with trepidation. They negotiate their way through the rows of bodies. These are not dead people, merely the passengers, beggars, vagrants and rickshawallas whose only shelter in Gaya is the train station. The tourists pick their way through puddles of dog urine and cow dung, get into taxis and head for Bodhgaya, 20 minutes away.

It's where the Buddha got enlightenment 2600 years ago. In the early morning, it looks serene. The roads are lined with trees. Monks walk single-file down the road, muttering mantras. A drum sounds from one of the town's many monasteries and temples. Birds sing in the trees. The butter lamps in the temples glow softly. At sun-up, Bodhgaya stands fully revealed.

The roads are patchy; sidewalks broken; muddy lanes behind temples and monasteries are ankle-deep in a garbage cocktail composed of polythene bags, waste matter and earth. A small clearing between two brand new hotels, right in front of the Bhutanese temple, is home to tumble-down huts with potbellied children rolling in the dirt alongside filthy piglets. Nearby is a pond, green with slime and choked with plastic water bottles and polythene bags. "How can a society accept this level of poverty? Why is nobody doing anything about it," asks Japanese photographer Mizuno who says he's too numb to take photos. He is one of many visitors who are here to take part in the 'Karmapa
900' ceremony, a year-long event that commemorates the birth of the first Karmapa Lama.