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Published: January 15th 2007
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Up at the very un-Christmassy hour of 4.30am to get a good start on the drive from Varanasi to the Nepali border. As we were getting in the four-wheel-drives Bill the leader handed us all little boxes and cards- very sweet of him, even if it most likely is covered by the company as trip expenses. They turned out to be small handpainted miniature Hindu gods and goddesses- I haven't identified mine yet, seems to be a minor one.
Driving towards the border I would occasionally drop off but my head banging on the window would put an end to that pretty quickly. After about 3 hours we stopped at a "tourist restaurant" but apparently we were the first foreign tourists who had ever dropped in, they usually had Indian families. Much excitement ensued among the staff. Eggs are often part of the breakfast in north India and several of us put in orders for scrambled eggs, which the poor chef had never heard of before. No problem, Bill went off to the kitchen to teach him how to make them. The cook was apparently very pleased at having added a new dish to his repertoire. As we left we
were all given huge marigolds- we often received garlands of them at the hotels but this time we were given a single large flower each- I attached mine to the window hinge of the 4WD.
After about 6 uneventful hours we arrived in Sunauli, the town on the Indian side of the border. Leonora the Dominican lady had her Indian visa in a cancelled passport- she had for some reason got a new passport after getting her Indian visa. This apparently hadn't been a problem when she arrived in India but the immigraton officials in Sunauli didn't like it very much, and Bill made sure that there were several other people in the office with him as the officials are much less likely to ask for a bribe if that is the case.
Indian formalities finished we loaded our bags into cycle rickshaws and walked through about 20m of no-man's land to Nepal. Unlike India, it is possible to get a visa on arrival for Nepal so about half of us had to fill out application forms and provide money and photos and about half of us just needed a stamp. Toru and I had made the long
Toru and Isabela
Making full use of the facilities at the breakfast stop... trip out to the Nepal Embassy deep in the Tokyo suburbs so didn't have to do too much paperwork here. The comment was made that Nepal looked a lot like India- that part of it does, but not far north things get a lot steeper...
Nepal is in a transition phase at present- even though an agreement has been reached with the Maoists, the unpopular King Gyanendra has been stripped of his powers and a peace process has nominally been started, things have not settled down completely and one of the political parties had called a bandh- a general strike- for Christmas Day. I had thought this would mean a kind of curfew but there were still plenty of people going about their business and we drove on to a hotel for lunch without problems. The problems started after that however as there was apparently a protest going on down the road so we had to wait in the hotel for several hours.
This gave the hotel staff, obviously unused to suddenly being swamped with 13 foreigners , plenty of time to sort out our meal orders which they got hopelessly muddled. It was just about guaranteed to
Lumbini
Main sanctuary, Ashoka pillar and fog happen whenever we all ordered together in Nepal- if we ordered 4 vegetable momos, 6 would arrive, if we ordered 4 chais and 4 coffees then 2 chais, 4 coffees and 4 ginger teas would somehow arrive.
Even that close to the border it was possible to see that you were looking at a different ethnic group in many cases- generally Nepalis are slightly or considerably more East Asian-looking than Indian people, no doubt due to the Tibetan influence. In fact in Varanasi Toru had been asked if he was Nepali- he usually wore a shawl and a wool beanie which was standard attire for a lot of Nepali guys too.
We left the hotel but soon stopped again in the town of Bhairawa in order to get a pass which would hopefully mean we would be let through the towns in spite of the bandh. It seemed to work and we finally reached Lumbini, too late to see the site of Buddha's birthplace as planned, but with enough time to have Christmas dinner. We had drawn names from Bill's hat a few days before for Secret Santa- we had to buy a Christmas present for our designated
person up to a value of 200 rupees (about $4US). I got a beautiful silk scarf and still have no idea who it was from.
I really wish we had been able to stay 2 days or more in Lumbini as it is a beautiful quiet rural area and the hotel was the nicest we had stayed in so far- single-storeyed with gardens and lawns, and I would have loved to spend more time at the Buddha's birthplace site which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Buddhist communities of various Asian countries- Japan, Korea, Thailand etc. have built or are in the process of building monasteries there but they are spread out over a wide area and due to the time we had lost we were only able to see the main ruins on Boxing Day morning.
Somehow archaeologists have managed to confirm that this is indeed the exact site where Buddha was born. The foundations of a palace- that of Gautama Buddha's father who was a king- were visible, plus a lot of stupas that had been added over the centuries as the site became a place of pilgrimage. It was a very foggy morning which
Prayer flags,
katas (silk prayer shawls) and the sacred bodhi tree made for some nice atmospheric photos of Tibetan prayer flags in the mist- they were attached to a bodhi tree which had a stream of devotees lighting butter candles. Some very devout Tibetans were prostrating around the main sanctuary- if you haven't come across this before it means they lie down on the ground face down with their hands above their heads, then stand up again, walk forward to the point where their hands were and repeat the process, going round in a clockwise direction, probably for many circuits. Some pilgrims in Tibet apparently cover hundreds of miles like this, which can take months.
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