STRIKES strikes and more strikes !!!

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Hello all ,
well I am back from 2 trips I took .
1 was at Bardia national park Amazing and even though *I did not get to see a Tiger I did see Rihno and Elephants !!!! and the lodge was wonderful , I did a rafting trip which was not white water for a change but was all day and the raft was so old the poor guys had to pump it up so many times , while I just looked around LOL !
I decided to go to Lumbani and see were Budddddha was born , but what a journey that was , I traveled 10 hours no problem and when I was 30 miles away there were strikes going on all over the place ( aparently a bus killed someone and they were all bloking the rds ) so I got off 1 bus walked a mile and got on a rickashaw and then got on another bus and waited 2 1/2 hours till it left and well we ended up going like 3 k in 3 hours so I got off the bus and decided I was going to walk the 23k that was left to go ( yes Idiot but it was the middle of the night in the middle of no mans land !! ) I crossed a bridge and saw some people they were also heading in the same direction and had called friends that were wqo9rking on the monestrys up there to get a lift , there friends came with 2 Motorbikes and even though some other locals offered me a lift in there tracktor I decided not to wait anymore and go by Bike it was a hair raising experiance as I had a heavy back pack and a normal day pack , both I was trying to carry while in the pitch black the poor guy had to carry me on the bike , we had to stop at a police check were I nearly passed out ( no dinner and it was 10pm ) he managed to take my day pack for me and carry it on the front and I put the wight of the pack on his seat ( so far to have that thing hangging off the back of a bike and have the weight on my back for so long ) we only had 3k to go , so they found a guest house and we all stayed at the same place for the night , they managed to order us noodels and a coke .
The Birthplace and Monersrys were fab but the whole area around and the guest houses were dumps as far as I was conserned so when I had seen it all I booked my Bus back to KMD .
I had booked the International Guest house and it when I finally got there is very nice !
I have seen most of the sights here and my friends that I met ( the bike guys from Lumbini ) picked me up and took me to there Monestry were they work , 1 of them dose cement work ( amazing sculptures ) and the other is a painter also amazing work , so nice to see the place were they create such things , I will put photos up frm India when and how I get there am not sure yet as there are more strikes going on , New government and lots of mad people ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh .
ok it is now sunny outside so best get out and have some lunch !
Take care miss you all

x

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Comments

[sonya]

still alive? :-)
hey chicky-babe, you are still adventuring like a crazy lady. loving the tales. still bringing back lots of good memories and also still making me very jealous haha. my god i can't believe you travelled that damn road on the back of a bike with your backpack. hope you were not "tickling" the driver... i remember that road was really just a patchwork of potholes. we crossed the border from india and stayed overnight in sunauli then took a jeep out to lumbini in the very-early morning fog. talk about "grey heaven" but it did lend a mystical quality to beautiful peace pagoda and the drive was quite surreal with massive saurus cranes darting out of the mist and through the grasslands. i guess you would not have seen much wildlife if trekking through there in the middle of the night. no doubt you would have been ready to roast one of those birds for your dinner by then! :-) missing you, many hugs, -s xo