Siddhartha had great food, great entertainment, a hot cousin for a wife, etc. But he suspected that there was more to life, so he snuck out of the palace a few times. On these travels, he encountered an old man, a sick man, and finally a corpse. Having realized the ubiquity of suffering, Siddhartha left the palace, renounced the crown, and sought out the holiest men to try to find how it could be possible that life would come to such a terrible end. Eventually Gautama became an ascetic, fasting and meditating for days at a time, hoping to find enlightenment. And finally, after meditating for about a month under a tree, it came to him. Nirvana.