they spend hours meditating just outside, under the ancient bodhi tree, a direct descendent of the one under which buddhists believe siddharth gautama, the royal prince, also meditated as he embraced a life of asceticism and became enlightened. >> i also would like to do the meditation here to discover myself, for my soul. and i believe this is the best place to do the meditation. >> buddhists believe that this is a very powerful place and anything that you do here is magnified, so any wishes you make for other people, any good wishes, any practice that you do, it's increased. the power is increased. so for example you see people prostrating you know, going down, i've been doing this for a month and that's a purification practice and it gets rid of pride and they believe it's much stronger to do it here. >> the arrival of pilgrims is part of a decades-long revival effort by india's government, beginning in the 1950s when prime minister jawaharlal nehru wanted to use buddhism to ally asian neighbors, many themselves coming out of colonialism and world war ii. >> so nehru declares bodh g